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DELAWARE 
AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

SOME ASPECTS OF A PENINSULA 
PLEASxVNT AND WELL BELOVED 

BY 

EDWARD NOBLE VALLANDIGHAM 

AUTHOR OF "fIFTV YEARS OF DELAWARE COLLEGE" 

WITH SO ILLUSTRATIONS 







.?,j*>:'iW/vi 



PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

1922 






COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 



PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS 

PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A. 



SEP -8 1922 



TO MT UFELONG FRIEND 

GEOEGE MORGAN, OF PHILADELPHIA 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED IN GRATEFUL 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE FACT THAT BUT 
FOR HIS. AID AND ENCOURAGEMENT IT NEVER 
WOULD HAVE BEEN WRITTEN AND PUBLISHED 

E. N. V. 



PREFACE 



THIS book does not pretend to be a history 
of Delaware and the Eastern Shore. That 
history has been written in large and in little by 
many competent hands, to whose works the 
author is deeply indebted. EQs humbler and 
less laborious task was to interpret to the people 
themselves of this Peninsula, as also to the 
stranger, the land and its inhabitants, in the 
past and in the present, to convey the rare and 
somewhat elusive charm of a region without 
thfe splendor of a bold topography, yet distin- 
guished for the variety of its mainly quiet land- 
scapes, the rich freshness of its woodlands, and 
the unique beauty of its waters. The early 
history of the Peninsula is here sunmaarized 
mainly to make clear the inter-relation of its 
parts, and the relation of the whole to its neigh- 
bors and to the country at large. There is also 
other historical matter introduced by way of 
illustrating phases of industrial and social 
development, and there are personal and local 
incidents and anecdotes illustrative of the char- 
acter and temperament distinguishing a people 



PREFACE 



isolated in some measure for three centuries by 
the peninsular geography of their home. 

The author acknowledges with warm thanks 
the readiness of friends, acquaintances, and 
mere strangers to aid liim in gathering facts 
and illustrations. In this matter he is pecul- 
iarly indebted for the suggestion and advice of 
George Morgan of Philadelphia, for tireless 
industry in every kind of help to John S. 
McMaster of Jersey City, an Eastern Shoreman 
of surpassing love and loyalty to the Peninsula ; 
to Chancellor Charles M. Curtis, to Judge Henry 
C. Conrad, to Henry B. Bradford, to William 
H. "Walker, Jr., to Everett C. Johnson, to 
Wilbur W. Hubbard of Chestertown, to Thomas 
F. Bayard, to Dr. Joseph S. Odell, to Levin T. 
Cooper of Sharptown, Maryland, to W. H. 
Schoff of Philadelphia, Secretary and Treasurer 
of the Deeper Water Ways Association, to J. 
Barton Cheyney, to Merris Taylor; to R. H. 
Soulsby, General Freight and Passenger Agent 
of the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic and 
Maryland, Delaware and Virginia Railroad 
companies for many pictures and permission to 
use a copyrighted map; to J. M. Davis of the 
same company for help in selection of pictures ; 
to Wilbur T. Wilson of Newark, Delaware, for 
cartographical work and much precise inf orma- 



PREFACE 



tioii; to Jolm Jan\^er of Middleto\\Ti, and to 
Edward Herbner of Washington. Finally the 
author is under great obligations to Griffin S. 
Callahan of Philadelphia and Frank R. Webb 
of Baltimore, both total strangers, each of whom 
furnished a large number of photographs from 
which were selected illustrations that could 
hardly have been obtained from other sources. 
The author has used at places in his 
text a few excerpts from his own articles 
published in the Philadelphia Record and the 
Boston Transcript. 

E. N. V. 

CHESTinjT Hill, ;Massachi:setts, 
June 1, 1922. 



CONTENTS 



I. 

wTHE LAND, ITS ASPECTS AND STORY 15 

II. 

VXOMMUNICATIONS 29 

III. 

w^HESAPEAKE VOYAGES 41 

IV. 

^^HE MARK OF RACE 56 

V. 

HUNTING, FISHING, YACHTING 73 

VI. 

HOUSES AND HOMES 85 

VII. 

EARLY CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS 101 

VIII. 

BOHEMIA MANOR 117 

IX. 

MASON AND DIXOn's LINE 136 

X. 

AN OLD MARYLAND PLANTATION 147 

XL 

WILMINGTON 157 

XII. 

COUNTY TOWNS AND OTHERS 175 



CONTENTS 

XIII. 

DOVER AND NEW CASTLE 194 

XIV. 

ISLANDS OF THE CHESAPEAKE 208 

XV. 

OCCtlPATIONS 231 

XVL 

HUMORS OF LAW AND POLITICS 245 

XVII. 

THE WELSH TRACT AND THE LABADIST8 2G7 

XVIII. 

EDUCATION AND UPLIFT IN DELAWARE 280 

XIX. 

^' ACCOMACK AND NORTHAMPTON 294 

XX. 

\/ CONCLUSION 309 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

High Tide on the Sassafras Frontispiece 

Pines, Chincoteague Island Title Vignette 

Fishing in Untroubled Waters 20 

Spring on the Eastern Shore 21 

The Infant Christiana near Newark 21 

Lumber Boats on the Canal 36 

Steamer Leaving Delaware and Chesapeake Canal 37 

Cypress Trees with Knees, Pocomoke River 37 

The Peninsula's North-Eastern Water Gate 42 

A Harbor of Rest 43 

An Amphibian Ox-Team 43 

The Event of The Day 46 

On A Lonely Shore 47 

A Light Breeze on a Pleasant River 52 

"Abandon Ship" Drill, on Chesapeake Steamer 53 

Fishing Craft in Harbor 58 

Canoe with Lateen Sail 58 

A "Far-Downer" 68 

Dolce Far Niente 68 

"In The Beached Margent of the Sea" 69 

Surf Bathing, Rehoboth, Delaware 69 

Regatta of Fishing Boats 74 

Yacht "Roxana" Entering Chesapeake and Delaware Canal . . 75 

Eastern Shore Fox Hunters 80 

Training a Bird Dog 81 

Three Gunners and a Few Ducks 81 

House of W. W. Hubbard, Chestertown 86 

Garden Gate, Hubbard House 87 

Beverly, of the Dennis Family 90 

Stairway at Beverly 91 

' 'The Judges," Georgetown, Delaware 98 

11 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Naaman's On Delaware 99 

Venerated Old Swedes 104 

Barratt's Chapel, The Cradle of Methodism 105 

Rehoboth Church on Pocomoke, Founded by Makemie 110 

Drawyers Church, Erected 1773 Ill 

Pulpit of Drawyers Ill 

Herrman and His Horse 120 

Shaded Highway near Bohemia Manor 121 

Farm Yard with Thatched Cow Shed, on Herrman's Augustine 

Manor 121 

Scene Near Delaware's Northern Arc 136 

Delaware's Birth Stone 137 

State, City and County Building as Seen Across Rodney 

Square 158 

The Du Pont Building 168 

Caesar Rodney House, Wilmington, An Example of Fine 

Masonry 169 

An Embowered Homestead at Easton 176 

Pocomoke City 177 

Chestertown's Lovely Water Front 180 

Betterton on the Sassafras River 181 

The Harbor at Snow Hill 181 

Seventeenth Century Custom House, Chestertown 184 

Sand Dunes and Light House, Cape Henlopen 185 

Turn-Basin at Salisbury 185 

Sussex County Court House 190 

Cambridge, on the Choptank 191 

Windy Day in Harbor of Crisfield , 191 

State House of Delaware 196 

Old Court House, New Castle 197 

An Old Georgian Mansion, New Castle 197 

Tangier's Main Street 208 

A Quaint Survival on Kent Island 209 

Dip-Well on Chincoteague 220 

Chincoteague Ponies in the Rough 221 

A Chincoteague Cottage 221 

Dredgers on a Calm Afternoon 232 

Coan River: At Anchor and at Peace 233 

Farm House, White Clay Creek Valley 238 

12 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Skipjack Under Sail 238 

A Few thousand Baskets of Tomatoes 239 

Laden Oyster Boats at Crisfield 239 

Welch Tract Baptist Church 268 

The Baptizing Creek 269 

Beloved and Beautiful "Old College" 282 

Country School for Colored Children 283 

Purnell Hall, University of Delaware 288 

Dormitory Doorway, Women's College 288 

Mt. Pleasant, A Typical Farm Group, Occohannock Creek.. 296 

Home of Nellie Custis 297 

Makemie Monument, Accomack 306 

St. George's Church, Called Ace of Clubs 307 

An Eighteenth Century Homestead, Chincoteague Bay 307 



DELAWARE 
AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

CHAPTER I 
THE LAND, ITS ASPECTS AND STORY 

CHARMING little lands, like charming little 
women, excite enthusiastic love and loyalty. 
A little land, indeed, may utterly lack charm for 
the casual stranger, yet mn and keep the 
unswerving love and loyalty of its native sons 
and daughters, especially if they have struck 
deep in its soil their ancestral roots. Our 
larger patriotism, intellectual and emotional, 
resting upon loyalty to a whole people's tradi- 
tions and ideals, is truly national, but our 
geographic affections, so to speak, are apt to be 
somewhat narrowly local. We cannot love 
three million square miles of territory with the 
instinctive affection that we feel for the native 
parish. A Bostonian of the elder day exclaimed 
^vith. passion that he could kneel and kiss the 
very stones of Boston, but he would hardly 
have knelt to kiss the stones of Shreveport, 
Oshkosh, Omaha, or even Lowell or Lawrence. 
As to Oshkosh, the rhymed syllables of a name 

15 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 



that offends the ears and stirs the laughter of 
Americans strange to the place, are said to hold 
for the natives a sweet beguiling melody. We 
are none the worse for our cat-like local attach- 
ments. We do not begin loving our neighbors 
by hating those of our own household; rather 
the warmth of the domestic hearth prepares 
us for universal benevolence. 

Islanders are especially prone to love the 
physical aspects of their native region, to con- 
fuse in a fiery passionate devotion land and race, 
physics and politics. Kathleen Ni Houlihan is 
served and worshipped under other names in 
other isles than Ireland.^ So, too, the almost 
islanders of that American ''Golden Horn," the 
Peninsula of Delaware and the Eastern Shore, 
love their little land with like passionate devo- 
tion. They too have their unswerving national 
patriotism, but they love above all other hills 
and vales those of the gracious region imme- 
diately beneath the Northern arc of Delaware ; 
they think no rivers so beautiful as the tidal 
streams that fret their way from the central 
watershed Eastward and Westward to the bays ; 
they eagerly contend that the noblest oaks and 
beeches glorify the hardwood forests of the Pen- 

'A native of a tiny old and moribund Swedish river port 
of Delaware, having traveled the world far and wide, returned 
declaring that he had nowhere seen aught so beautiful as the 
village of Christiana. 

16 



THE LAND 



insula ; that ' ' the greenest of all green leaves are 
the high leaves of the holly" growing native in 
the beloved soil ; that no pine groves answer more 
sweetly and majestically to the wayward touches 
of the million-fingered sea winds than those of 
Delaware and the Eastern Shore. They have 
faith, too, like all such lovers of little lands, that 
even mere aliens have only to know the Penin- 
sula to understand its peculiar charm for those 
of native blood and ancestry. Perhaps in this 
thought they are too sanguine ; possibly all such 
local patriotism is founded in unreason, or must 
be held in some sort a mere extension of per- 
sonal egotism. Nevertheless, the author of this 
book, a Delawarean by birth, an Eastern Shore- 
man by ancestry, although much of his life an 
exile, gives to all such as know not this little 
land, the confident invitation, ''Come and seel" 
Snugly tucked away between the parallels of 
North Latitude 37° 4' and 39° 50',^ between 
Delaware Bay and the Atlantic on the East, 
and the length of the Chesapeake on the West, 
lies the Peninsula of Delaware, Maryland, and 
Virginia. Its land area of about 6,150 square 
miles is distributed among Delaware's three 



*To be precise, 39° 50' 22.33" is the latitude of the Pen- 
insula's "farthest North." That of Mason and Dixon's Line 
is 3.9° 43' 10.91". The Southern boundary of Delaware meas- 
ures 34 miles, 309 perches. 

. 2 17 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

counties, her only three, nine of Maryland, and 
two of Virginia, in the respective proportions 
of rather less than 2000 square miles, nearly 
3400, and nearly 750. Delaware rules in addi- 
tion 400 square miles of tidal water, Maryland's 
nine counties include about four times as much, 
Virginia's possibly twice as much. Thus the 
entire area, land and water, measures nearly 
9,000 square miles. Much of the Peninsula's 
wealth comes out of its waters, so that the 
tidal area is far more important in proportion 
to its extent than the area of dry land. Indeed 
the waters of the three jurisdictions plus those 
of the bordering ocean and the bays, beyond 
mean tide, help to determine not only the indus- 
trial and economic condition of the inhabitants, 
but even their political attitude, vitally affect 
their social system, and greatly influence them 
both physically and temperamentally by giving 
to almost the whole Peninsula a highly distinc- 
tive climate. Many of the inhabitants are of 
amphibian habits, with a passionate love of salt 
water, an aptitude for handling line and net, 
from early childhood a nautical use and wont, 
making them as much at home afloat as ashore. 
Maryland, Virginia, and Michigan are the only 
states of the Union whose territory is divided 
into two distinct parts by considerable interven- 
ing bodies of navigable water, and the land 

18 



THE LAND 



between the bays richly deserves the title that 
Michigan has taken to herself and written in 
Latin upon her escutcheon — ''A pleasant 
Peninsula." 

In shape the Peninsula somewhat resembles 
a hammer-head shark without tail-fins, for it 
widens at the North between the Delaware and 
the Susquehanna, contracts a few miles below 
almost to its narrowest, attains its greatest 
width about mid-length, and gradually narrows 
to the Southern extremity where the Chesapeake 
meets the Atlantic. From the extreme North 
of the Delaware arc South-westward to Cape 
Charles at the tip of the Peninsula is a trifle 
over 191 miles. At the widest the Peninsula 
measures about 70 miles, less than half of which 
is the Southern boundary of Delaware. North 
of the Virginia line the narrowest part of the 
Peninsula lies approximately along the Chesa- 
peake and Delaware Canal, a length of about 
14 miles, and on this line Delaware is but nine 
miles wide. In length the State is less than 100 
miles. The two counties of Virginia are more 
than seventy miles in length, and at the widest 
hardly more than twenty mdles,* with the land 
area reduced by the sinuous fretting of innu- 
merable tidal indentations that produce on both 

•According to Jennings Cropper Wise, the average width 
is about eight milo,s. 

19 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

shores, a continuous fringe of islands and rag- 
ged little peninsulas. No spot on the whole 
Peninsula is ten miles from navigable tidal 
water, and in a large part of the region hardly 
a hamlet or farmstead is five miles from a 
steamboat wharf. 

Topographically the Peninsula includes in 
its upper five hundred square miles, a hill coun- 
try of great beauty, rising at points to a height 
of nearly 450 feet above sea level, watered by 
many swift, clear streams, and richly wooded 
with oak, beech, birch, chestnut, walnut, hickory, 
the tulip poplar, the gums, many varieties of 
maple and other deciduous trees. In the extreme 
North, immediately beneath Delaware's domed 
roof, so to speak, narrow valleys and steep hills 
produce a dramatic miniature mimicry of moun- 
tain scenery. From every height in the hill 
country the horizon seems forested, though in 
most places the woodland areas are small. This 
part of the region is rich in limestone and 
"^brick-clay, kaolin and feldspar, and has been 
mined for iron. Further South is a region of 
gently rolling surface, with few trees except 
along the water courses, and a little below are 
wide cultivated plains, almost denuded of tim- 
ber. Much of the soil below the 39th parallel 
is sandy and in most of lower Delaware and 



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SPRING ON THE EASTERN SHORE 



.Jtj^kt. 




THE INFANT CHRISTIANA NEAR NEWARK 



THE LAND 



the Eastern Shore the predominant native 
trees are pines. In all parts of the Peninsula 
however, grow noble oaks and other deciduous 
hardwood trees. Below the parallel 38° 30' the 
fig ripens, though it is sometimes cut to the 
ground by the frost ; holly, cypress and magnolia 
are abundant, the live-oak occurs, and mistletoe 
flourishes. The two counties of Virginia have 
been called ''the land of the evergreen," for 
here the pine and its vegetable kinf oik are pecul- 
iarly rich and abundant. 

Bayard Taylor sang the "soft, half -Syrian 
air" of the Peninsula, and the phrase is hardly 
extravagant, for although a severe winter per- 
haps twice in a decade seals up the tidal shallows 
almost from end to end of the Chesapeake for 
weeks together, a genuine spring normally comes 
to the region even above the 39th parallel before 
the end of March, to that sixty or eighty miles 
further South near the middle of February. The 
cold of winter, as the heat of summer, is tem- 
pered by the influence of the ocean and the bays, 
and although between mid-May and the end of 
September often come days of sweltering heat, 
sometimes many in succession, tropic nights 
are not frequent, especially near the water. For 
three-fourths of the year the skies seem low and 
friendly, and even in mid-winter, there come 

21 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

days to the Southern half of the Peninsula with 
the softness of a Mediterranean Spring, when 
the heavens deepen to violet and purple, cocks 
crow, birds sing, and the air is languorous. 
Indian Summer runs, a red-golden thread, 
through the late Autumn, reluctantly withdraw- 
ing itself toward the end of November, to gleam 
again with delicious soft radiance for sweetest 
half -days almost up to Christmas. 

Historically the Peninsula was one of the 
earliest regions in the whole country to be set- 
tled by men of British blood, though in Dela- 
ware the Dutch and Swedes were earlier than 
the British. Before the Pilgrim Fathers 
reached Plymouth, Jamestown had sent a tiny 
colony across the Chesapeake to what is now 
Northampton county, Virginia. Delaware 
seems to owe her very existence as a state to an 
abortive Dutch settlement in 1631 at Zwaanen- 
dael, (the Valley of the Swans) near the pre- 
sent site of Lewes. In the same year William 
Claiborne set up his trading station on rich and 
lovely Kent Island in the Chesapeake opposite 
Annapolis. Seven years after the Dutch made 
their short-lived settlement at Zwaanendael, the 
Swedes and Finns came to Wilmington, to be 
^'conquered" in 1655 by the Dutch, who still 
claimed the Delaware as their ** South" River, 

22 



THE LAND 



as the Hudson was their North River. Nine 
years later the Dutch in Delaware yielded to 
the English. 

The conquest of the Dutch at New Amster- 
dam and upon the Delaware by the English was 
in pursuance of their claim to Virginia, New 
England, and all between. In due ■ course 
William Penn, having received the grant of 
Pennsylvania, begged of James Duke of York 
the ' ' three lower counties on Delaware, ' ' which 
form the present state of Delaware, and con- 
tested the claim of the Calverts to the Peninsula 
above the Virginia line as part of the Maryland 
Palatinate. Penn held that he inherited the 
Dutch claim to the Peninsula founded upon the 
settlement at Zwaanendael, a claim that the 
Dutch themselves had steadily asserted until 
their empire in North America was seized by 
the English. The Dutch had insisted that the 
phrase ''hactenus inculta'' in the patent of the 
Calverts gave them only such parts of the region 
as had not been '' cultivated," that is occupied 
by civilized men, before the granting of Lord 
Baltimore's patent. Willian Penn strove with 
the weapons of peace rather than with those of 
war, but he was keen at a land bargain and he 
had friends at court, as also in the courts, so 
that in the end Chancellor Hardmcke of England 



23 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

divided the Peninsula between the claimants. 
Penn's Delaware counties won their legislative 
assembly in 1703, their own elective governor, 
in 1776, precisely in time for the little commun- 
ity to become one of the original thirteen states. 
The year after the Dutch settlement was 
made at Zwaanendael Cecilius Calvert, the 
second Lord Baltimore, heir to an Irish peerage, 
inherited the Palatinate^ of Maryland, granted 
to his father in lieu of Avalon in Newfound- 
land, which region seemed too severe in climate 
to the first Lord Baltimore and his colonists. 
Although the father died before he could take 
possession of the new principality, the son in 
1634, made his first settlement at St. Mary's, 
West of the Chesapeake. The infant capital 
was seated on a supremely beautiful aflQuent 
of the Potomac. Lord Baltimore claimed under 
the clear language of his charter the whole 
Peninsula above the Virginia line, and his North- 
em boundary was placed at the 40th parallel. He 
found William Claiborne, an officer of the Old 
Dominion, claiming and holding Kent Island as 
his own, with the countenance of jealous Vir- 
ginia. Claiborne and the Calverts warred over 

*A palatinate is a region governed in effect by a viceroy, 
whose residence is a "palace" as becomes the residence of the 
sovereign's representative. The Roman Emperor Augustus bad 
his residence on the Palatine Hill; hence the word "palace." 

24 



THE LAND 



Kent Island intermittently for a quarter of a 
century with varying fortunes, until Cromwell 
reluctantly placed the latter in control of their 
Palatinate, from wliich they had been twice 
ousted by Claiborne, once as the accredited 
agent of Cromwell to suppress the Royalists in 
Maryland. With the restoration of the Stuarts 
came the end of Claiborne's influence at court, 
and save for a short time the Calverts exercised 
authority over the whole Peninsula above Vir- 
ginia until forced by a legal decision of question- 
able justice to make a compromise with William 
Penn. In 1691 Lord Baltimore was deprived of 
his rule over Maryland, and he thus ceased to be 
a viceroy with the delegated powers of a king, 
though he did not actually lose his title to the 
soil. The fifth Lord Baltimore, a Protestant, 
recovered in 1715 his vice-regal authority. While 
the Calverts were contending for all that their 
patent seemed to grant, their Eastern Shore was 
gradually settled in the main by British colo- 
nists of various religious denominations, a few 
French Huguenots, and Dutch and Swedes, 
strayed in from the settlements on the Delaware. 
In the course of 225 years Maryland's Eastern 
Shore was cut up into nine counties, of which 
Kent, dating from 1642, was the earliest 
created, Wicomico the latest. All but Wicomico 

25 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

were created before the Revolutionary War. 

The history of Virginia's two Eastern Shore 
counties is one with that of the Old Dominion 
West of the Chesapeake, though the region 
differs from the rest of Virginia, in that 
it had early an interesting mixture of Dutch 
and Puritan elements to the population, and 
later received immigrants almost exclusively 
of British, mainly, indeed, of English blood. 
The whole region was for a time a single 
county, but division was made in the Seven- 
teenth Century. The land in 'both counties 
was from the first held in large plantations, and 
with the incoming of aristocratic Royalists dur- 
ing the rule of the ' ' saints ' ' in England, the ten- 
dency toward large holdings was strengthened. 
Slavery also took root, in the region, though 
later than elsewhere in the Old Dominion. Hardy 
fisher folk of the coastal islands set up for them- 
selves a more democratic social system, and 
depended little if any upon slave labor. They 
drew their living out of the free natural oppor- 
tunities afforded by the tidal waters, and never 
knew real poverty. 

These two counties with their light warm 
soil, with a climate mainly wholesome by reason 
of their constant exposure to the salt-laden, 
antiseptic winds of ocean and bay, their natural 

26 



THE LAND 



riches in fish, flesh and fowl, developed a 
somewhat distinctive character, and a social 
condition in which aristocracy and democracy 
were oddly mixed. They escaped in 1861-65, 
the worst devastating effects of the Civil War, 
because the region was early occupied by the 
troops of the Union, and no serious conflicts took 
place, though local sympathies were overwhelm- 
ingly with the Southern Confederacy and many 
of the inhabitants entered its armies.^ 

Abortive movements to unite the whole 
Peninsula into a single* state have at times 
attracted more or less languid interest. One 
such movement in the seventies of the last 
century brought on a lively discussion. In this 
instance the name suggested for the peninsular 
commonwealth was *' Delmarvia." There was 
some favorable sentiment in a few of the Mary- 
land counties, and Delawareans would have 
been glad to see the area and population of the 
state more than doubled, though they had little 
taste for exchanging the sonorous and histori- 
cally significant name ** Delaware" for the 
hybrid ' ' Delmarvia. ' ' Of course the Virginians 
were cold to the proposal, scornfully unwilling 

• At the opening of the Civil War a brother of the author 
was seized in Accomack on the very day when he intended to 
lead a group of young Marylanders across the Chesapeake into 
the Coniederacy. 

27 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

to sell their birthright for what seemed to them 
an unsavory mess of pottage. 

With a population of well above half a million 
and a prospective population long before the 
end of the century of possibly half as much 
more, the Peninsula would make a state of 
respectable size, great potential wealth, a richly 
varied industrial life, with the permanent assur- 
ance of a wholesome agricultural interest, and 
the precious, and let us hope inalienable, public 
possession of inexhaustibly rich tidal waters. 
The Peninsula, is, indeed, a child of the tidal 
waters, a gift of the sea. Had the Dutch been 
suffered to people the region, they would have 
snatched many thousand acres from the bays 
and even the ocean, made Delaware not " three 
counties at low tide," but perhaps four or five. 



CHAPTER II 
COMMUNICATIONS 



ALTHOUGH the Peninsula was a pioneer in [ 
/l. steam railways and steam navigation, it 
lagged mnch in later improved communications. ( 
When Washington became the national capital, 
the route across the narrow throat of the Penin- 
sula was a natural link in the journey from the 
North to the new seat of government, and such 
it has been ever since. Thus the route of about 
fifteen miles from New Castle to Frenchtown 
on the Elk River was traversed by most public 
men of New England and the Middle States, at 
least twice a year, and by many much oftener. 
The law-makers of that day had an invincible 
distaste for Washington, a chronic and acute 
nostalgia, a disease that might improve legis- 
lation to-day were it epidemic in both houses 
of Congress. John Adams left the raw, new 
capital whenever he could for the charm and 
comfort of his New England home, and Jeif- 
erson, although acclimated as the New Eng- 
enders were not to the region of Washington, 
preferred Monticello to his splendid isolation 
in the Wliite House, in which attitude he 
was imitated by others of the "Virginia 

29 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

dynasty." John Quincy Adams, even after he 
had **redd up" the slovenly White House 
grounds inherited from the easy-going Virgin- 
ians, loved far better his home at Quincy. Thus 
then, anyone curious as to the personnel of 
of public men might well have haunted the 
wharves at New Castle, made frequent 
journeys to Frenchtown, and taken meat 
and drink at the taverns between. First a 
turnpike, and then the New Castle and French- 
town railway connected the terminal points. 
According to a gazetteer published in 1807 New 
Castle then bid fair to be an important point of 
transfer. " A great line of packets and stages," 
says this authority, *' passes through it [New 
Castle] from Philadelphia to the Western 
country. It is at present one of the greatest 
thoroughfares of travel in the United States. 
There are seven large and well accommodated 
packets which sail constantly between this port 
and Philadelphia, and from ten to fifteen heavy- 
wagons for the transmission of goods and pas- 
sengers across the Peninsula to Frenchtown, 
besides four land stages." At Frenchtown 
statesmen and common folk took ship for Balti- 
more, whence they went by stage to Washington. 
Mr. Clay must often have endured in the ear- 
lier years of his national service the discomforts 

30 



COMMUNICATIONS 



and delays of baffling winds on the Chesapeake 
and the Delaware, and the jolting horror of a 
crowded coach on the rude turnpike, for what- 
ever his route from Kentucky to Washington, 
he had calls to the region above Mason and 
Dixon's Line. Daniel Webster, too, must have 
been painfully familiar with the route from 
1823 until a better was provided, and it would 
be hard to name a public man of Washington's 
first three decades as the capital, who had not 
tasted the tedium of that journey and the 
mitigating liquor of the terminal and midway 
taverns. President Monroe used that route in 
his ** progress " to New England. Incidentally 
Delaware, with the canny instinct of the 
Tariffians, who are said to have furnished us 
with the word ** tariff," sought to make public 
profit of the casual stranger by laying a tax 
upon passengers. From early Greek times, 
the holders of narrow peninsular trade routes, 
whether plain robbers or their modern legalized 
equivalent, customs officers, have despoiled the 
travelling public. 

Steamboats soon replaced the sailing pack- 
ets, but it was not until 1833, after years of 
legislation in both states, that the New Castle 
and Frenchtown Railroad, traces of which still 
show in green bits of embankment, improved 

81 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

' ' ' III! — ; 

the land route. A primitive locomotive engine, 
imported from England, was with difficulty 
tinkered into going order to draw tiny coaches 
on the rails of strap-iron pegged to wooden 
sleepers, which in turn were pegged to stones 
set deep in the ground. The speed of ten miles 
an hour was held to be perilous. Baskets hoisted 
on tall poles notified the line ahead that the train 
was coming. From time to time train hands, 
detecting a rail with end turned up where a 
spike had loosened, got down and secured the 
threatening " snake head." According to the 
original charter, the rate for passengers was 
three cents a mile, a tariff later raised to ten 
cents because the cost of building and maintain- 
ing the line had been underestimated. Each 
passenger could carry 100 pounds of baggage 
free of charge. 
',« Before the New Castle and Frenchtown 
'Railroad was finished Augustine Herrman's 
mid-Seventeenth Century dream of a Chesa- 
l peake and Delaware Canal had been realized 
/ after more than half a century of discussion 
and surveying. In 1829 the canal was opened 
for use, and almost a century later it was bought 
by the Federal Government as a link in that 
interior water way from New York to Florida, 
which, indeed, brings New England and the 

32 



COMMUNICATIONS 



Great Lakes even to far Duluth into communi- 
cation with the uttermost South. The century of 
the canal as a private undertaking was one of 
alternate prosperity and poverty, but there 
never was a time when its locks were not a highly 
picturesque and instructive epitome of marine 
architecture as illustrated by the vessels of the 
coastwise trade, and of the fisheries in the two 
bays. Indeed every form of craft known to the 
inland waters, and many such familiar to the 
coast from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mex- 
ico, with not a few ocean-going vessels, domes- 
tic and foreign, passed through the canal in 
picturesque procession. While yet the New 
Castle and Frenchtown Railroad was in the 
bloom of youth, if its grimy face may be said to 
have betrayed blush or bloom, it was fore- 
doomed to ruin by the welding of an all-rail 
route between Philadelphia and Baltimore. For 
years the huge steam ferry boat Maryland car- 
ried trains across the Susquehanna where it 
neared its entrance to the Chesapeake. Not 
New Castle, but Wilmington was the mid-way 
city of this route. By a dramatic bit of financ- 
ing with a painful surprise to some of those 
concerned, the Pennsylvania Railroad long after 
obtained control of the line, and later still, a 
railway president's seemingly mad ambitions 

S 33 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

I ^1 ■ I ■ ■! I ■■.■■■■.■■■■■.■■— ■■■ ■I.I I .,, — ■.■1. ■ ■ „ II I ,J 

led to the building of a rival line between Balti- 
more and Philadelphia, with connections to New 
York, and to Washington and the West. The 
slow extension of railways throughout the Pen- 
insula was accomplished before 1890. All 
lines were connected with the Delaware Rail- 
road, and eventually became part of the Penn- 
sylvania system. 

Years before the earliest of these develop- 
ments in the railways of the Peninsula, Balti- 
more was the water-gate to the Eastern Shore, 
the Western Shore, and the whole South, 
through the operation of steamboat lines owned 
by several corporations. John Fitch, a native 
of Connecticut, but for much of his active and 
brilliantly inventive life concerned in experi- 
ments looking to steam navigation upon the 
waters of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and 
Delaware, anticipated Fulton's Clermont by 
twenty years, and obtained special privileges in 
the Delaware River. His undertakings failed, 
and he slew himself, but the memory of his bold 
dreams seems to have haunted the local imagi- 
nation, and steamboat travel was early devel- 
oped in the waters of the Peninsula. Maryland 
improved her rivers in the early national period 
without the aid of appropriations from Con- 
gress, and while yet slow horse-drawn coaches 

34 



COMMUNICATIONS 



were used ashore, scores of river towns and 
hamlets and many a lone farm were visited by 
steamboats from Baltimore. Eventually most 
of the steamboat lines came under the control 
of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the boats 
were run in connection mth the land lines. The 
stranger within the gates then learned how far 
a skilled, long experienced and popular body 
of employes may be the guarantee of success to 
a public service corporation. Men for a gener- 
ation or more familiar with the steamboats, the 
rivers, the folk to be served, demanded fair 
treatment at the hands of the new corporate 
owners, and properly won their demands. A 
Federal order for the separation of the land 
lines and steamboats failed of effect because 
nobody was willing to undertake the latter as 
disjoined from the former, and the subtle lubri- 
cant of tact and courtesy, for which the Chesa- 
peake mariners are famous, together with their 
wide and friendly acquaintance in the local trade 
areas, has served since to maintain workable 
relations between a great alien icompany and 
an intelligently exacting and excusably suspi- 
cious public. In fact the corporation has 
discovered its own soul in a body of loyal 
employes native to the soil and at home in 
its waters. 

35 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

Ferries from Baltimore and Annapolis link 
the two shores of the Chesapeake, and join 
with the Peninsula's railway system, and in 
turn local jitneys on the Eastern Shore and as 
well on the Western, connect river ports and 
railway stations with one another, as with 
intervening territory. Here as elsewhere is the 
problem presented by competition between 
privately owned motor-vehicles run over roads 
built and maintained at public expense, and 
railways operating lines built and maintained 
at corporate expense and subject to taxation. 
The quasi-monopoly of steam navigation is 
mitigated by the reservation of public wharves 
at Baltimore for the use of privately owned 
craft, operating in the same waters. It must be 
said for the steamer lines and their interrelated 
railways that motor vehicles afloat and ashore 
have made it increasingly difficult for them 
to maintain the service that local shippers 
would like to have. 

Maryland was some years ahead of Dela- 
ware in building improved highways. These 
cement roads set the mark of civilization upon 
the Eastern Shore, shaming with their hard, 
smooth surface the squalid hamlets and crazy 
negro cabins of the "back country." The exam- 
ple of these improved roads built by a public 

36 




STEAMER LEAVING CHESAPEAKE AND DELAWARE CANAL 




CYPRESS TREES WITH KNEES, POCOMOKE RIVER 



COMMUNICATIONS 



commission at relatively low cost and with clean 
hands, has also wakened Delaware to her needs 
in this regard. It required, however, the initia- 
tive of a private citizen to provide the finally 
effective awakening. When Coleman Du Pont, of 
Delaware and a few other places, proposed his 
plan to build a cement liighway from end to end 
of the State, with ways for vehicles fast and slow, 
heavy and light, shade trees, agricultural 
experiment stations, and other luxuries, he 
could not induce the Legislature to grant him 
a right of way extravagantly wide. Some of his 
fellow citizens suspected him of political 
designs, regarded the gift horse as an audacious 
form of public bribery. Others fancied him as 
intending to use the right of way for dark pri- 
vate purposes of personal profit. Still others 
shrewdly found an explanation in '* megalo- 
mania," an idea expressed without the aid of a 
Greek derivative, by the plain Anglo-Saxon 
" big-head." If George Washington had the 
tallest monument in the land, Coleman Du Pont 
would have the longest, except the Lincoln High- 
way. Baffled for the moment, Mr. Du Pont 
consented to begin a cement highway at the 
Southern boundary of the State and build it 
Northward through Sussex county. This more 
modest undertaking had crept Northward about 

37 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

twenty miles when it was stalled between two 
villages by a stubborn farmer who would not 
grant a right of way. John G. Townsend hast- 
ened to Wilmington with a strong delegation of 
Sussex county men, and in spite of their warn- 
ing that he promised too much, pledged himself 
to remove the obstacle. Mr. Du Pont had already 
called off his engineers and workmen in disgust, 
but his answer was that they should return to 
the job on Monday, an answer given on Satur- 
day. Mr. Townsend hastened home and bought 
the farm, wondering how he should come out 
whole, and the cement road began again its 
progress northward. 

As Governor, Mr. Townsend helped to pro- 
mote a scheme of highway improvement at 
public expense, and made Coleman Du Pont a 
member of the Highway Commission charged 
with executing the work. After correspondence 
by mail and telegraph that made Secretary of 
State Everett C. Johnson even thinner, if 
possible, than his native wont, Mr. Du Pont fin- 
ally wrote resigning from the commission, and 
saying in effect, " Build the road when you will, 
where you will, at what width you will, and of 
what material you will, and when it is finished 
I'll pay the cost." The road from end to end 
of the State is now finished, and Mr. Du Pont 

88 



COMMUNICATIONS 



has kept his word. He has also become United 
States Senator through a succession of kaleido- 
scopic changes that have subjected him and all 
others concerned to criticism as severe as ever 
was directed at a group of public men. Some 
years ago, when his highway was under discus- 
sion and cited as an instance of his political am- 
bition, he owned that he would like to be United 
States Senator long enough to reform the Senate 
as a working legislative body and leave it in the 
hands of a salaried person competent to run it 
right. As was once said of the French Govern- 
ment, the United States Senate, **the more it 
changes, the more it is the same thing, ' ' and gos- 
sip reports Mr. Du Pont as disappointed in its 
sloAvness to accept reform at his hands. An old 
aphorism reads, ** Lucky in war, unlucky in 
love." For some of the Du Fonts the aphorism 
might be varied to read ' ' Lucky in war, unlucky 
in politics." Perhaps Coleman Du Pont is 
learning what some of his kinsmen have learned, 
how humiliating are the terms upon which a 
party ''angel" accepts honors at the hands of 
politicians who have for the ears of the angel, 
but one cry, the raucous ''give," "give," 
ascribed by Scripture to the ' ' daughters of the 
horse-leech." Meanwhile Delaware mth its 
cement highway from end to end of the State, 

39 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

I =^ 

is building at public expense a system of 
improved subsidiary roads that will place upon 
the little commonwealth the stamp of advanced 
civilization, and in conjunction with like activi- 
ties in Maryland and Virginia, make the whole 
Peninsula, in the matter of highways, a model 
for its neighbors. North and South. 



CHAPTER III 
CHESAPEAKE VOYAGES 



MARYLAND'S little Mediterranean, the 
Chesapeake, to compare a small thing with 
a great, is a blandly beautiful inland sea, with 
a climate of its own, a distinctive population 
along its shores and inhabiting its islands, and 
a trade and navigation unique in the local com- 
merce of the United States. If you would 
approach these waters in exactly the right 
fasliion you should go by way of Philadelphia 
and the Delaware. Other modes of approach 
are agreeable, as that by sea from Boston on 
the North or Norfolk on the South, or even that 
by rail to Baltimore. It is the Delaware River 
and the century-old Chesapeake and Delaware 
Canal, however, that offer the most delicious 
foretaste of what the Chesapeake has to give. 

The Delaware and Chesapeake Canal is the 
immediate water-gate of the bay, and this joyous 
entrance lies about forty-five miles below Phila- 
delphia. On the Delaware water front of that 
city are the wharves of a company that has long 
operated a line of steamboats plying between 
Philadelphia and Baltimore, long narrow craft 
made to fit with neat precision the three locks 

41 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

encountered on the voyage. If you have chosen 
your time aright you find yourself astern on the 
upper deck of the little steamer at half -past 
five of a fine spring evening, well on your way 
down stream, with Philadelphia fading behind 
you, and the gracious panorama of the Delaware 
defiling before your eyes, clothed in the mingled 
light of the westering sun and a three-quarter 
moon already well up the sky. The whole voyage 
seems like an adventure in toyland. There is just 
room on the upper deck astern for half a dozen 
passengers and the officer that paces back and 
forth in the narrow space, cheerfully answering 
questions, and convincing the company that they 
are the guests of the ship. You sup in a little 
saloon at one of half a dozen impeccably neat 
tables, and look out of the window beside your 
shoulder upon water, sky and shore, while you 
eat much the kind of delicate though sufficient 
meal that good house-wives serve at evening 
all over the Delaware and Maryland Peninsula. 
Your stateroom looks like a bit of mere stage 
setting, so tiny is it, so dainty in its make- 
believe aspect. 

If the boat seems small you have more than 
ever the sense of merely making play when you 
reach the entrance of the canal at Delaware 
City. Standing on the upper deck at the prow 

42 



a 

H 



o 
w 

S) 

I 

> 

EC 
H 
H 
W 
2! 

H 

> 





A HARBOR OF REST 




AN AMPHIBIAN OX-TEAM 



CHESAPEAKE VOYAGES 



you tower above the puny lighthouse with its 
malignant red danger speck menacing your eye. 
Soon after the vessel passes the locks, the canal 
widens into what looks like a lovely river, 
and its umbrageous shores beneath the moon are 
as romantic as those of many a natural stream. 
One smells the odor of magnolia blossoms, sees 
the dim cattle at feed upon gently sloping pas- 
tures, hears the croon of sleeping birds in the 
thicket, and can almost reach from the tiny 
cabin window and snatch bits of the foliage as 
the little steamer threshes slowly along its 
journey of fourteen miles to the final lock at 
Chesapeake City. 

No city, save Baltimore, has at its back door 
so rich a market garden as the almost semi- 
tropical watershed of the Chesapeake affords, 
so swarming and vast a fishpond as that of the 
bay and its tidal tributaries. From earliest 
morning twilight till seven or eight o'clock the 
water-front streets of Baltimore are dense with 
every kind of draft vehicle, and piled high with 
the products of the Chesapeake country. From 
mid- April into June the street is odorous for 
blocks with the breath of fresh strawberries. A 
single steamer will sometimes fetch in more 
than 100,000 quarts. 

It is the land of plenty from which all these 

48 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

things come, that now invites the voyager. His 
voyage may be short or long, according to his 
objective point and the season of the year. If 
he would while away the eight or ten hours 
between his arrival and the afternoon sailings 
of the bay fleet, he will probably find a steamboat 
for Annapolis, which mil land him by way of 
the Patapsco, the Chesapeake and the lovely 
Severn River, in that quaint old capital well 
before noon, give him some hours for its sights, 
and return him to Baltimore, an hour's jour- 
ney by rail, by three or four o'clock. The 
stranger to the Chesapeake waters cannot do 
better than place himself trustfully in the hands 
of the official experts at Pier One, Pratt Street, 
in the very heart of Baltimore's local water- 
borne terminal. His advisers will unfold to him 
a puzzling array of routes, so timed and related 
and so interlocked with short rail journeys from 
port to port, that the traveller may sleep every 
night aboard ship, and waste little time ashore. 
Most travellers believe they have seen the 
Chesapeake country after having taken the all- 
night voj^age to Norfolk, or the York (River 
boat to West Point, whence one reaches Rich- 
mond by rail. Either of these voyages has its 
charm, but neither has the characteristic inti- 
macy of those that show one the Chesapeake's 

44 



CHESAPEAKE VOYAGES 



tidal tributaries by daylight. All told the 
voyages of the bay fleet outward and inward 
aggregate at least 4000 miles of navigation in 
the bay and its sinuous tributaries of varying 
length. Everybody has heard of the Potomac, 
the Eappahannock, the James, but one must 
be in some sort bred to the Chesapeake to have 
acquaintance mth those streams of the Eastern 
Shore — the Elk, the Sassafras, the Bohemia, 
the Chester, the Choptank, the Nanticoke, the 
Tred Avon, the Wicomico, the Manokin, the 
Pocomoke, the Onancock, the Nandua, and the 
Occohannock, most of them navigable for five or 
ten miles from the bay, some of them for forty 
or fifty miles, and each fascinating with a dis- 
tinctive charm of its own. 

Any man in a hurry is urged to shun these 
voyages as he would his dearest foe. You may 
take train from Baltimore, run North-eastward 
into the edge of Delaware, and thence down the 
Peninsula to Snow Hill in Worcester county, 
Maryland, the head of navigation on the Poco- 
moke River, in something like four-and-a-half 
hours. If you would approach the same port 
by water you leave Baltimore at five o'clock in 
the afternoon, and find yourself at the head of 
navigation some time between six and ten o 'clock 
the next night. From Baltimore to Denton on 

45 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

the Eastern Shore is perhaps fifty miles, as the 
crow flies, but the voyage by way of the beauti- 
ful and changeful Choptank River lasts for 18 
hours or more. Seaford, Delaware, is a little 
over one hundred miles in a direct line from 
Baltimore, but the voyage down and across the 
bay and up the noble Nanticoke takes from six- 
teen to nineteen hours. Salisbury, at the head 
of navigation on the Wicomico River, one of 
three beautiful streams thus named, can be 
reached from Baltimore by ferry and rail in less 
than six hours, but the voyage by bay and river 
takes three times as long. Upon all such jour- 
neys the return voyage is apt to be as interesting 
as the outward-bound voyage, for the aspect of 
the country, and the activities ashore vary with 
the time of day. 

The man who carries into his holidays the 
hurry of his working year, might well be fretted 
by the easy deliberation of a land where time 
was made for slaves. He, however, who would 
rather lose time than save it, who would flee the 
strenuous life, who would make the intimate 
acquaintance of a whole people by the simple 
process of sailing into their back gardens, who 
would feel the semi-tropical character of the 
lower Eastern Shore, where the fig lives 
unblighted through the milder winters and the 

46 



: > ^. 



4 :k.'\.A ivT'i*- 



s 

a 




«;:h>«-'n'V' 




ON A LONELY SHORE 



CHESAPEAKE VOYAGES 



mocking bird sings on bright days in January, 
may wisely commit himself to the truly tender 
mercies of those who conduct these delight- 
ful voyages. 

The voyager wakes at dawn or an hour later 
to find himself, mayhap in some deliciously 
sparkling, sunny little harbor, with a bit of 
smooth tawny sand rimming the slender sickle 
cape, fringed with irregular pines, that reaches 
out toward the shallows of the bay or river. 
Unfamiliar little craft lie huddled at the 
wharves or make sail from neighboring coves. 
Everything glitters and sparkles as if the very 
air and sunshine had bathed in those lucent, 
gray-green waters. Perhaps the earliest morn- 
ing stop is at an island well out in the bay, with 
a busy little landing place, and a swarm of odd 
figures, black and white, waiting to welcome 
friends or to take the boat to the next harbor. 
The voyage goes on sometimes for half a day up 
a winding river, with a dozen landing places, 
now on one side, now on the other. Sometimes 
you have merely the bare wharf at the end of 
a pier running back two or three hundred yards, 
over shallow water or vivid marsh, to the fast 
land. Now and then the vessel turns a wooded 
bend of the stream to come upon a busy little 
town. At such ports the stop may be of an hour 

47 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

or more, and the obliging captain will let the 
interested voyager know that there's time 
enough to explore the place. 

Upon some of these voyages the vessel 
leaves the main stream and penetrates the love- 
liest little tributaries with land-locked harbors 
and bowery shores where the mocking bird 
pours out his soul in the most dramatic of songs. 
The deeply embosomed harbors open and open 
with their seemingly endless seas of sparkling 
waters, until one half believes the ship has dis- 
covered a new Northwest passage. 

Much of the country is less than rich in 
aspect, and some of it is unmistakably poor, but 
the headlands in many places are dotted with 
dignified old-colonial houses set amid grounds 
that slope to the water's edge, so that the owners 
may catch oysters almost without leaving their 
own gardens. The Pocomoke voyage takes one 
into the brilliant waters of little Onancock 
Creek, where one sees the plain but hospitable 
seat of the Virginia Wises. An episode of the 
Choptank voyage is the run by moonlight up the 
Tred Avon or Third Haven, a stream penetrat- 
ing a rich and beautiful farming country mth 
lawns sloping to the water and densely embow- 
ered homesteads. It is worth the loss of two 
hours sleep to be waked on the outward bound 

48 



CHESAPEAKE VOYAGES 



voyage as the vessel comes dowii the Tred Avon 
at dawn, so charming is the spectacle of that 
intimate, domestic navigation, which takes one 
almost into the barnyards ashore. Nothing can 
exceed the lonely charm of the Nanticoke River, 
which winds for miles in great curves through 
a region of alternate marsh and upland to 
fetch the voyager at high noon into a busy little 
Delaware town. He has voyaged clean across 
the Eastern Shore, and the head of navigation 
is only twenty-five miles from the Atlantic. The 
Nanticoke, the Choptank, and other rivers of 
the Eastern Shore, which appear as thread-like 
and sometimes nameless streams on ordinary 
maps, are really estuaries, from two to five miles 
broad at their mouths, and considerable water- 
ways even up to the head of navigation. About 
the mouth of the Wicomico is a group of little 
islands, some of them with quaint harbors that 
one sometimes sees on the outward voyage by 
the light of a new risen sun, on the return, 
beneath the magic of a white moon and the min- 
gled old gold and dim-rose of the after sunset 
hour. The air in these streams from mid- April 
to the end of May is deliciously fresh and mild 
morning and evening, and in autumn it has a 
soft mellowness even up to the middle 
of November. 

4 49 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

The return voyage from Salisbury to Balti- 
more begins at noon, and on a day in late Spring 
or early Summer the run down the "Wicomico is 
like a magnificent panorama, a glorified moving 
picture, in which scene after scene defiles delib- 
erately beneath the delighted eyes of the 
voyager. Over head is the sapphire sky, with 
cloud mountains on the horizon, sun-smitten to 
dazzling whiteness as if snow-capped. Unbe- 
lievably green marshes, backed with richly 
forested fast land, stretch for miles along the 
vessel's course. Now a farmstead shows with 
its lawn falling in natural terraces to the river. 
Now the staunch brick gable of an Eighteenth 
Century church peeps out from its oak-grove. 
Yet again the scene changes, and, as the boat 
nears a little wharf ministering to the conven- 
ience of a huddled hamlet, everybody on deck 
sees an old lady in her kitchen gathering the 
last things that shall accompany her upon the 
adventurous voyage to a landing ten miles be- 
low. Helped by the sympathetic eyes of all 
beholders, she hastens to the gangplank to be 
gallantly led aboard in breathless flurry by the 
soothing purser or his youthful aide. 

Tyaskin is a highly picturesque and difficult 
little harbor of the Nanticoke voyage, starred 
on the time-table with a foot-note that says, 

50 



CHESAPEAKE VOYAGES 



''Tide permitting." Luckily for the contin- 
uance of the voyage beyond Tyaskin, the cap- 
tain, more than forty years a seafarer, and for 
a full generation familiar with the Nanticoke, 
knows the harbor as intimately as he knows the 
furnishing of his own bedroom at home. He 
knows that when the tide is favorable he can 
count on a few feet of clear water either way, 
bow or stern, and is assured of an inch or so 
between the bottom of his vessel and that of 
the harbor. For him, getting in or out of 
Tyaskin is a mere matter of backing off when 
the rudder stirs up too much mud, and going for- 
ward when the keel grates on the bottom. 
So he tinkles his signal bell every other minute, 
backs and fills, gains a foot now, an inch then, 
knowing all the while that the little crowd 
ashore, for whom he provides the sole amuse- 
ment of the community, is watching, some half 
hopeful perhaps that this time he may stick till 
the next tide, all however, ready to applaud his 
triumph should he escape misfortune, and now 
and then someone calling encouragement, ' ' You 
kin do 't. Cap 'n Johnny, you kin do 't. ' ' Captain 
Johnny always does it, and it is a point of 
professional pride with him never except in case 
of dire necessity to take advantage of that 
phrase, ''Tide permitting." 

51 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

The roustabouts of the Chesapeake are a 
race of irresponsible workers, lodged in the 
forecastle, fed between decks, sleeping where 
and when they can, trundling the stout iron 
trucks with low wheels in thunderous chorus 
night and day. Their songs and laughter liven 
the sliip when the peace of evening falls upon 
the scene in some lonely silent harbor where 
she lies moored for the night. With a vast deal 
of freight to unload at the busier harbors, the 
roustabouts follow fast upon one another's 
heels, taking great strides as they cross the deck 
and hasten down the gangplank, and varying 
the task with wild dance steps and grotesque 
movements of legs and body. The cleverest or 
luckiest at craps reach Baltimore with pockets 
full of their luckless fellows' pay, and quit work 
till urban pleasures exhaust their gains, and 
hunger sends them back to the hard routine 
of the voyage. But even among these dusky un- 
skilled workers, there is the promise of a 
better day. 

"Whoso voyages in the Chesapeake region, 
if he be a stranger to the land, should prepare 
himself for the journey by the diligent study 
of a book of etiquette calculated for the latitude 
of Mason and Dixon's Line, or a bit further 
South, and should temper even such precepts 



a 

ta 

H 
H 

N 

H 

O 






a 





a 



m 



CHESAPEAKE VOYAGES 



with all the geniality at his command. Unsus- 
picious good will between man and man is the 
social law of the Chesapeake. If a raw-boned 
* 'far-downer," clad in his palpably best clothes, 
says to you as you watch the buildings of Balti- 
more fade in the dusky gold of an urban sunset, 
^' Nevah bin on tliis hyuh rowt befo' suh!" 
don't fall into the crude error of giving him a 
sub-Arctic stare and answering in a monosyl- 
lable; he might think you had been taken 
suddenly ill. He would not understand your 
first rebuff, and would be sorry for your breed- 
ing if he discovered that you had made the 
churlish mistake of supposing him anxious to 
force an acquaintance. Should he put his creed 
into words, wliich he will not, he would say that 
it was impossible for the son of a gentleman to 
have a social aml)ition. His people have been 
decent oystermen, or moderately prosperous 
farmers for two hundred and fifty years in the 
same or nearly the same spot, and he may bear 
an old English name as good as anybody's. His 
courtesy is universal, addressed impartially to 
the stranger in irreproachable outing costume 
and to the colored boy who waits at table, 
because it is part of his native self-respect. He 
has the same kind of personal dignity that one 
finds in the native Cape Codder, and in such 

53 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

Long Islanders as have not been debased by 
too close association with the summer colony 
from New York, and he tempers his mamiers 
with innate sweetness caught from the warmth 
of the Chesapeake suns. 

As to the officers of the boat, they regard the 
round-trip traveller as a guest. Sometimes the 
Northern voyager wonders whether he shall not 
come back to Baltimore as the accredited owner 
of the vessel, her tackle and apparel, so anxious 
seems everyone on board to make him at home. 
These are busy men, with twenty wharves to 
make, difficulties of navigation to meet, hun- 
dreds of tons of freight to handle and record, 
but they are never too busy to be courteous. 

And the waiters! As it is certain that no 
white man or woman can hope to be as truly and 
consciously respectable as a respectable colored 
man or woman, so no white person of whatever 
rank or breeding quite equals the insinuating 
courtesy of the best Negro waiters in the Chesa- 
peake. One tips, of course, but one tips in mod- 
eration, and with the conviction that that 
inimitable courtesy is truly unbought. It brings 
one the soothing sense of having down cushions 
solicitously placed between one and every 
possible jolt or jar. But yield not too easily to 
the blandislmients of the waiter when he softly 

54 



CHESAPEAKE VOYAGES 



whispers in your ear at breakfast. ** De's ham, , 

an' lam', an' chick 'n, an' fried oyste's, an' clam /, 

fritte's, an' sof ' crabs ; an' Ah reck'n ye '11 have ,'■ ^ '^ 

yo' aigs sof bil't, an surrup with yo' griddle 

cakes?" Listen to the voice of that siren too 

often, and you return from the voyage a 

dyspeptic wreck. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE MARK OF RACE 



DELAWARE has nearly half the Penin- 
sula's 550,000 inhabitants, Wilmington 
half of Delaware's. The rural Peninsula is 
perhaps 97 per cent, native, and of the whites 
about 90 per cent, are mainly of British blood, 
many of them descended in more than one line 
from Seventeenth Century immigrants. Even 
Wilmington is less than fifteen per cent, alien. 
Delaware has mixed strains of early Dutch, 
Swedish, Finnish, British and French blood, 
with later and thinner additions of these and 
other racial strains. Much of the Eastern Shore 
has been lightly touched by foreign immigration 
since the early or middle Eighteenth Century, 
and in some counties the aliens hardly exceed a 
score. Along with the predominant British fam- 
ily names are those inherited from all the other 
early immigrant races, some of them disguised 
almost beyond recognition. , Familiar French 
names in Delaware are Bayard, in early colo- 
nial days sometimes spelled after the Gallo- 

56 



THE MARK OF RACE 



Dutch fashion, Matier, pronounced Mateer, 
Jan\der, usually pronounced Janveer, a name 
brought to New Castle by a Huguenot immigrant 
of 1650, G-aresche, Rudolph, Du Pont, the last of 
rather late American planting. Far down upon 
Maryland's Eastern Shore occur the French 
names Devereaux, Prideaux, now corrupted to 
Pridix, and borne for more than a half century 
probably by none but descendants of the fam- 
ily's slaves, Dashiel, Aydelotte, and many more. 
Geographical names are mainly English. Of 
the eleven Eastern Shore counties all bxit Wico- 
mico and Accomack bear English names. A 
loyal Delawarean called his three sons New 
Castle, Kent, and Sussex Delaware Davis. 
Delaware's townships, called ''hundred," bear 
English names for the most part, along with 
Dutch, Swedish, Irish, Indian and Welsh. The 
chief cities and villages have British names, with 
a few snatched from every corner of the globe, 
and the hybrids Delmar and Marydel, borne by 
border commmiities. Old inns furnish such 
names to villages and hamlets as Cross Keys, 
The Mermaid, The Bear, Rising Sun, Red Lion, 
Pepper Box. There are a few oddities, as Cor- 
ner Ketch of grim connotation, Catswamp (orig- 
inally Wildcat Swamp), Dames' Quarter, 

57 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 



Katy Dysart's. Many water courses, large or 
small, bear such Indian names as Choptank, 
Tuckaho, Nanticoke, Quantico, Appoquinimink, 
Wetipkin, Tyaskin, Anamessex, Sinepuxent, 
Chincoteague, Watchapreague, Pungoteague, 
Nassawaddox, Machipongo, Assawaman, 
Mattaponi, Manokin. 

Conversation among ''nice people" espe- 
cially old ladies, is apt to take a sanguinary tone, 
and to bristle with genealogical detail, for even 
the Quakers, who know that earthly fame is 
dust, jealously keep family records. One some- 
times sees hung upon the dining-room wall 
of a modest house a framed and glazed coat 
of arms, for thousands of families cherish 
belief, well or ill founded, in a gentle, noble, or 
even royal ancestry. On the Peninsula, as else- 
where in this amusing world, good folk treasure 
the name and fame of locally or nationally 
distinguished ancestors, possibly one, two, three 
in a generation or a succession of generations, 
and conveniently forget the obscure or worse 
occurring somewhere in the background, and 
pretty thickly, of almost any family, however 
exalted. Two generations ago somebody was 
usually malicious enough to recall that this or 
that rising man who had built a showy house or 

58 










3 |®^A|W^^ 







THE MARK OF RACE 



set up a coach had a ''redemptioner"^ in his 
line of descent, and like as not a portly citizen 
rolling by in his limousine with opulent rumble 
may even now stir a censorious on-looker to the 
venomous phrase, ** grandson of an overseer." 
As a matter of fact, although many a fam- 
ily, important or obscure, has a well authenti- 
cated drop of gentle or noble blood, most even 
of the recognized political and social leaders 
are sprung in the main from those who for six, 
eight or ten generations on this side of the 
Atlantic were of far more importance than their 
European ancestors for as many centuries 
before. Perhaps few colonial immigrants came 
solely as the persecuted for righteousness sake, 
though many, it is true, came seeking religious 
liberty. All such, whether Catholic or Protes- 
tant, plain Quaker, stout Presbyterian, loyal 
Anglican, were mainly of sound stock, with the 
personal energy implied in a willingness to fore- 
go the comforts and advantages of old civilized 

^ Trimbles and others in Cecil County pride themselves 
as descendants of Daniel DeFoe's redemptioner niece, said to 
have run away to America after a quarrel with her mother. 
She married the son of the farmer who had "bought her time," 
and received from her Uncle Daniel her mother's little fortune. 
Part of the heritage was a chair, supposed to have been from 
DeFoe's study, and now treasured by the Delaware Historical 
Society. Dr. W. P. Trent, the American biographer of DeFoe, 
has been unable to verify this tradition. 

59 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

■ — ' 

Europe for the liardsliips of a raw country, 
peopled with savages, but with many there must 
have been mixed motives, the ideal wish for 
freedom of conscience, religious or political, and 
the highly practical hope of finding wealth and 
social consideration in a region where the for- 
tunes of most were to make and natural oppor- 
tunities rich and plentiful. We hear of tanners, 
carpenters, and skilled mechanics of various 
trades among the ancestors of families long 
conspicuous. Although the Calverts fetched 
with them the sons of some eminent Catholic 
families, the first colony in the Palatinate 
included many plain folk. It is significant that 
many families of the older immigration know 
little of their forbears in Europe, or know much 
only through personal investigation in Great 
Britain or elsewhere. Incidentally, it imperils 
family pride to seek in Europe verification of 
the treasured dim tradition as to the ancestral 
knight who fought at Courtrai in 1302, or of the 
noble who ''came over mth the Conqueror." 
As like as not one finds one's own name and 
blood shared by a simple carter in Wessex, or a 
prosperous butcher in Brussels. - 

Nevertheless i% ''it takes three generations 
to make a gentleman," it should hardly take 

* Ilhistrations from fact. 

60 



THE MARK OF RACE 



three centuries to make an aristocracy, and the 
American maxim, *^ three generations from 
shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves," cannot be proved 
true by the social history of Delaware and the 
Eastern Shore. Whatever drove the early immi- 
grants to the Peninsula, they found a goodly 
land, made the most of their opportunities, and 
in many instances handed down to their 
descendants ideals and habits of comfort and 
conduct that have persisted with surprising 
tenacity. Free natural opportunities on the one 
hand, and slavery on the other helped to main- 
tain the skilled mechanic on a plane of comfort 
and consideration which the Old World did not 
accord his trade. Many of the older blood who 
have a long line of colonial and national leaders 
behind them show unmistakably the mark of 
race, but also men of the Peninsula inured to 
manual toil, sometimes in occupations long 
traditional with their families, have a fine 
personal dignity that only the dullest stranger 
could fail to recognize. Slavery upon the 
the Peninsula, as everywhere in the South, im- 
posed upon the owner, however rich or distin- 
guished, the necessity of recognizing in the 
poorest reputable white man a fellow member of 
the ruling race. ''Poor white trash" was a 
phrase not of the master, but of the slave. If 

6X 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

the local magnate secretly disprized his plain 

neighbors he had to hide his pride, whether of 

wealth or of birth, if he wished the good will of 

those about him or their votes at election. On 

the other hand, the plain people expected good 

things of young men whose ancestors had done 

well, and welcomed them as political and 

social leaders. 

Thus there was, indeed, a society sure of 

itself, and therefore not what the '' society 

column" calls ** exclusive, " so sure of itself 

that it did not fear the approach of its neighbors. 

There was also always a helping hand for the 

clever son of a poor man ambitious of education, 

and a professional career. When the late John 

S. Wise entertained Charles Francis Adams 

some years ago at Kiptopeke, a great, high-set 

house overlooking the Atlantic at the mouth of 

the Chesapeake through a grove of glorious 

pines far below, the host invited the whole 

neighborhood, to honor the guest from New 

England. Mr. Adams hardly knew which he 

enjoyed most, sitting on the floor with Mr. Wise 

to pore over old family papers of historic 

interest, or mingling with the promiscuous 

crowd of several hundred come to share the huge 

open-air feast provided. He went home to 

Boston, and at a gathering of respectable 

Bostonians, advised them to acquire some of 

6i 



THE MARK OF RACE 



the democratic warmth that he had found 
in Northampton. 

The stranger has usually found it hard to 
make headway in the politics of the Peninsula 
unless he came with the prestige of name or 
blood familiar and reputable, or with the intro- 
duction and permanent favor of some one 
locally respected. Delawareans like to know the 
background of their public men. Thus the 
Bayards of New Castle county and the Sauls- 
burys of Kent, the former from the beginning 
of the Union under the Constitution, the latter 
for the better part of a century, have been 
political leaders, and the Ridgelys of Dover 
have had a high place in popular regard as 
public men and lawyers since colonial days. The 
Wise family of the Eastern Shore of Virginia, 
the Goldsboroughs, the Lloyds, the Vickers, 
the Henrys, the Pearces, the Constables, the 
Upshurs of both Maryland and Virginia, 
the Handys, the closely interrelated families of 
Robins, Purnell, Spence, and Franklin, and 
many others in all parts of the Peninsula, most 
of them near or remote kinsmen by blood or 
marriage, have played their parts for genera- 
tions in the political and social affairs of the 
region, though home-grown ''new" men have 
constantly come forward, and it has always 

03 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

behooved those of old distinction to bear them- 
selves and wear their honors modestly. 

From early colonial times the clergy stood 
high as leaders and advisers, spiritual and 
intellectual. Makemie, the Presbyterian pio- 
neer, married the daughter of a local magnate in 
Accomack, and his daughter in turn married a 
man of importance, and was called ''Madame," 
perhaps because of her kinship to one King, an 
Irish baronet, one of the few titled persons on 
the Eastern Shore.^ A successor of Makemie, 
the Rev. Samuel McMaster, who served from 
1774 to 1811, as pastor of Rehoboth, Snow 
Hill, and Pitts Creek churches, all founded by 
the pioneer, is curiously referred to in some 
records of the Presbytery of Lewes, as 
''Bishop McMaster." 

Such a society as grew up in the colonial 
Peninsula, far removed from the influence of 
urban centres and from the interests and intel- 
lectual activities of the great world, was neces- 
sarily provincial, as it still is, though there were 
always families, clerical and territorial, with 
something of cosmopolitan interest and atti- 
tude. Makemie left one of the largest private 
libraries outside of New England. In the tiny 

"A somewhat recent descendant of the Irish baronet built 
a new house that displeased his wife, who vowed she'd never 
enter it, but he bided his time and held her funeral in that 
very house. 

64 



THE MARK OF RACE 



fishing village of Port Penn, at the head of 
Delaware Bay, seven Drs. David Stewart suc- 
ceeded one another for two hundred years, most 
of the time occupants of the same delightful old 
brick house, still standing, and steady conserv- 
ators of culture. In spite of such families there 
was, and is, much illiteracy in parts of the 
Peninsula, and superstitions of the Seventeenth 
Century, and of far earlier times, long persisted 
and still persist. Old English provincialisms 
of speech have not yet left the lips of some 
rural Delawareans, and are heard among the 
* 'far-downers" of the Eastern Shore, in ''tJie 
back country" almost anywhere, and on the 
islands of Chesapeake. In Western Sussex, a 
mill founded by a local corporation was popu- 
larly known as *"Mung-'em's-Mill," because it 
was owned "among them," and the term was 
still in use hardly more than half a century ago. 
For some country folk in Southern Delaware 
c-a-n-t spells "kaint," and "housen" is prob- 
ably still the plural of house in the same region. 
Many a man half a lifetime exiled from Sussex 
pronounces ''corn" as if it were spelled k-a-r-n. 
Sussex, indeed, is almost a small province to 
itself, an imperium in imperio, with its own 
inherited ideals and point of view. With nearly 
half the land area of Delaware and more than 
half the water area, it has hardly one-fifth the 

5 65 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

population, or less than fifty to the square mile. 
It is nearly as large as Rhode Island, with some- 
thing like a tenth of Rhode Island's population. 
Here linger old English customs, as for example 
the celebration of Twelfth Night. *' Moving 
day," until recently all over Delaware the 
25th of March, the first day of the Dionysian 
year, still prevails as such in Sussex. That 
Bishop of Delaware who somewhat recently 
gave up his see to enter what he had been bred 
to call the ** Roman Church," discovered the 
enduring social charm of Sussex, to which some 
Delawareans are persistently blind, just as 
others are blind to the quiet beauty of its far 
horizons, its tidal rivers, its sandy plains edged 
with the blue of pine forests, its peaceful ponds 
lit with the fondly lingering after-sunset glow.* 

* George Morgan of Philadelphia, most of his life exiled 
from Delaware and author of half a dozen books, still retains 
his native Sussex flavor and loyalty, as does his cousin, Dr. 
Morgan, President of Dickinson College, and has the gift 
of detecting the like in others. Catching a word from the 
conductor of an electric car in Philadelphia, he said: "You're 
a Delawarean?" "Yes." "Sussex County?" "Yes." "North- 
west Fork Hundred?" "Yes!" 

The author had a like dialogue with a parlor car porter 
on the station platform at New Haven, Conn., running about 
thus: "You're from Maryland?" "Yes, Sah." "Eastern Shore?" 
"Yes, Sah." "Worcester County?" "Yes, Sah." "Snow Hill?" 
"Yes, Sah!" "I thought so when I saw 'Purnell' on the end 
of yoiur suitcase." 

66 



THE MARK OF RACE 



Family tradition and history, especially on 
the Eastern Shore, are quaint, picturesque, and 
significant, all of which qualities appear in the 
tradition of the Dennis family of Beverly, which 
mansion stands upon a tract of land descended 
in the family since 1669. In the graveyard at 
Beverly lie many generations of Dennises. One 
patriarch sleeps beside his four wives. Perhaps 
it was he, who, finding his son unwilling to wed 
a rich ward, took the heiress himself, and kept 
the fortune in the family. Another known as 
the * ' Marrying Dennis, ' ' being told in old age by 
a granddaughter that there were rumors of his 
significant attentions to a lady, answered: ^'My 
dear, I reckon I'll be a marrying man as long 
as I can chew clabber." For generations the 
Dennises have given congressmen, senators, and 
judges to Maryland. Alfred P. Dennis, after a 
scholarly career as professor of history, fol- 
lowed by years of outdoor life in search of 
health, went abroad for war work, and was so 
useful that Mr. Hoover last fall asked him to 
undertake the serious task for the Bureau of 
Foreign and Domestic Service, of learning what 
is Europe's consumptive capacity for Ameri- 
can foodstuffs. 

Although the Worcester county families of 

67 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

Robins, Spence, and Purnell have intermarried 
for generations, they have had their amusing 
cousinly spats. It is family gossip that one of the 
wilder Spences, who had found Princeton and 
Yale equally uncongenial, meeting his cousin 
Judge Robins on a lonely highway, humorously 
''borrowed" twenty dollars of him at the point 
of the pistol. As the borrower was known to 
have checked an annoying cock in mid-crow by 
a well aimed shot, the Judge naturally affected 
to enjoy the pleasantry. The Purnells, whose 
name has always been accented on the first syl- 
lable at home in Worcester county, but shifts 
the accent to the second'when their heads appear 
above Mason and Dixon's Line, have a tradition 
that seven brothers of the family reached the 
Eastern Shore about the middle of the Seven- 
teenth Century, a tale easily believed, for they 
are scattered over the whole Peninsula and 
have penetrated to many distant parts of the 
Union. Dr. William Henry Purnell, of the ' ' Que- 
ponca Purnells," first President of Delaware 
College after the resuscitation in 1870, practised 
law in Baltimore, recruited and commanded the 
Purnell Legion in the Civil War, was Comptrol- 
ler of Maryland and Postmaster of Baltimore. 
His daughter is Dr. Caroline Purnell of Phila- 

68 




By Courtesy of B. C. & A. R. R. Co. 



A FAR-DOWNER 




^.. 



By Courtesy of B. C. & A. R. R. Co. 

DOLCE FAR NIENTE 



i^. •• ^fi: i»^i''>«sS!ttll88!aK»a»i«i:SKS?^Bfiaet.>,«»t 



I 




•*# 



IN THE BEACHED MARGENT OF THE SEA 




^ i 



^|i,|i.;;>..Hjti«.. .'..^^^ 



By Courtesy ot B. C. & A. R. R. Co. 
SURF BATHING, REHOBOTH, DELAWARE 



THE MARK OF RACE 



delphia, who distinguished herself as a war 
worker in France. 

The Spences believe that their ancestor 
signed the ''Solemn League and Covenant" in 
1643. ''Adam the first" reached the Eastern 
Shore in time to help found Snow Hill, in 1684, 
though the name Spence occurs earlier in 
records of the region. The family has no evi- 
dence of relationship to the Spence ancestors 
of President Monroe. Ara Spence and his 
nephew Thomas Ara Spence were judges in 
Maryland, and the latter went to Congress. The 
elder Judge's brother, Dr. John Spence, was 
United States Senator, and another brother, 
Irving Spence, lawyer, legislator and Presby- 
terian elder, wrote the history of early Pres- 
byterianism on the Eastern Shore. Still 
another brother, Lemuel Purnell Spence, con- 
tinued the line of elders hardly broken in a 
century-and-a-half. Irving Spence 's grandson 
is Thomas H. Spence, professor of Modern 
Languages, and Vice-President of the Maryland 
Agricultural College. As to the Robinses, 
descended from the distinguished and useful 
Col. Obedience Robins of Accomack, they were 
in colonial days Episcopalians and Royalists. 
Judge Robins, he of the lending adventure, had 

69 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

the ambition to set up his family as territorial 
magnates by entailing his landed estate of many 
thousand acres upon his heirs male in primo- 
geniture. The first heir was The Rev. John 
Purnell Robins of the Episcopal church, who 
married Elder Lemuel Purnell Spence 's daugh- 
ter, and was early left by her death a widower 
with one son, second heir to the entailed estate. 
The father turned Presbyterian, took as second 
wife a daughter of the Rev. Robert M. Laird, 
also a Presbyterian, and persuaded the son, 
James Bowdoin Robins, to join with liim in cut- 
ting the entail so as to furnish a portion to a 
second family of children. The third heir to the 
entailed estate. Dr. William Littleton Robins, is 
a reputable physician of Washington, but not a 
territorial magnate of the Eastern Shore. Per- 
haps he is not materially worse off that the 
dream of Judge Robins was shattered, for his 
remote cousin, elegant Captain John Selby 
Purnell of charming old Berley Cottage at Ber- 
lin, gave away a farm of nearly 3000 acres 
because his tenants could not make it pay taxes. 
When the Presbyterian Spences and their 
Episcopal cousins the Robinses found them- 
selves together, and with leisure, an ample 
possession of both, they were apt to have a 

70 



THE MARK OF RACE 



rather sharp exchange of pleasantries. Upon 
one such occasion the Robins cousin recalled 
or invented a tale that the Spences in lowland 
Scotland had been horse thieves, and the 
Purnells were all descended from one Poor 
Nell, a servant brought over by Col. Obedience 
Robins. To this boast, the Spence cousin, nose in 
air, responded, "If that's true. Cousin Billy, I'm 
proud to say that now the tables are turned." 

Judge Robin's brother-in-law, Judge Ara 
Spence, never had a judgment reversed dur- 
ing liis thirty years on the bench. He lived in 
a pleasing but simple and far from large 
country house facing Sinepuxent Bay below 
Snow Hill, where he entertained a few depend- 
ent cousins^ and kept a corps of household slaves 
and at least thirty cats. His body servant, an 
impish boy named Maj, so vexed the judge one 
morning that he seized the lad by the scruff of 
the neck, dragged him down to the bay shore 
and announced that he was to be drowned as 
worthless. Taking the threat seriously, Maj 
turned up the whites of his eyes, and utterly 
disarmed offended justice with the plea: *'Fo' 
Gawd, Mass Ara, Ah hain't had ma bref- 
fast yit." 

The abolition of slavery brought to the 
Eastern Shore social and industrial revolution, 

71 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

' '■ 

from which parts of the region were almost 
half a century in recovering.^ As was to be 
expected, the shock of sudden change dazed for 
a time both black and white, but within the past 
generation improved agricultural methods, the 
subdivision of the land, co-operative buying and 
selling, and the gradual emergence of the col- 
ored people from the penumbra of slavery, 
have wrought great changes, and made much of 
the region a garden spot. Both races have 
shared in the new prosperity, and some of the 
colored people farm their own land. 

" Many old plantation homes in Accomack and Nortliampton 
have never fully recovered from the industrial and social 
revolution of the period following the Civil War, though those 
counties are agriculturally the richest of the Union in propor- 
tion to the land under cultivation. Some of the larger houses 
have fallen into decay, and others of more resistant material 
are gaunt and shabby, with neglected grounds and bare in- 
teriors still dignified by reason of spacious rooms, beautiful 
stairways, and tasteful mantels. Said the lady, when her 
neighbor, hurrying past her on the day of the Charleston 
earthquake, clad mostly in a top hat mechanically snatched 
from the rack as he fled streetward, lifted the hat with a suave 
bow, "Why, my dear friend, you've forgotten everything but 
your manners." Those luckless ones of the Eastern Shore 
who have not known how to fit themselves to changed condi- 
tions, still captivate amid the wreck of a civilization, with 
the gentlest manners known to man. 



CHAPTER V 
HUNTING, FISHING, YACHTING 

GUNNING" has been a passion with the 
people of the Peninsnla since white men 
first set foot npon the land. Fishing also has 
been a favorite sport, perhaps with an even 
larger part of the population. As to the inhabi- 
tants of the coast — its inlets, rivers, creeks — 
oar and sail have always been with them of 
familiar use from cliildhood. To those coast- 
dwellers, in a land where tidal water is within 
easy reach of almost everybody, a boat seems 
the normal vehicle for business or pleasure, 
salt water the normal highway for all occasions. 
From the Susquehanna's mouth to Cape 
Charles, the whole length of the Chesapeake, 
for miles upon miles of tributaries small and 
great, and Northward along the Atlantic coast, 
with its intricate fringe of islands, and its many 
miles of natural interior water ways, to Dela- 
ware Bay and on upward to the Christiania, 
a boat with most families is quite as much a 
matter of course as a wheelbarrow or any 
other familiar and necessary vehicle or utensil 

73 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

■■■■■■ ' ■ ■ ■' '-'■'■ '■ - ■■■■■»■ I ^ 

of domestic life. The love of whatever has to 
do with tidal water has been bred in the blood 
and bone of these folk for nearly three centuries. 
An Eastern Shoreman justified to a sceptic his 
love for the land of his birth and ancestry, by 
saying: *'Why not, when you've only to fall 
\' overboard to get your dinner?" The men of the 
Peninsula were taught from early boyhood to 
shoot straight and to ride fearlessly, as also to 
handle rod and line, net and * ' dipsy. ' ' An East- 
ern Shore youth at College returned to his pro- 
fessor of English a^ essay on the Fox by John 
Burroughs, assigned for reading, with the dry 
comment that he thought he knew more than the 
author about foxes. His was probably no vain 
boast, for like many another such youth it had 
been his wont to mount his horse at early morn- 
ing, whistle his hounds, ride alone to the 
nearest woodland, start a fox, and follow him, 
if need be, for a dozen or fifteen miles. When 
the midday hour came he was sure of hospit- 
able entertainment at a neighbor's house, and 
he cared not how late his return ride fetched 
him home. The outdoor life, afloat or ashore, 
with boat and rod, or with gun in the wholesome 
and sympathetic comradeship of horse and dog, 
has been a tradition of many generations. 
Those pale folk who hold "that hunters been 

74 



c. 



y 

c 

c 
c 
> 




.iitftitiiarit-''!..^ 



HUNTING, FISHING, YACHTING 

nat holy men" forget the softening and sweet- 
ening influence of close communion with nature 
at all hours of the day and in all her moods and 
aspects. Boys often took horse and dog and gun 
to boarding school, thus mitigating the pains 
of education. He is a dull man who does not 
feel himself in good company with a well-bred 
dog or a well-bred horse. No doubt the sports 
that now occupy our youth were too much neg- 
lected by those lovers of the care-free life in 
the open, so long as game was afoot near home 
almost the year round, and no jealous ''closed 
season" restricted the normal activities of vig- 
orous, country-bred folk. But the sports of 
those days escaped the sordid commercialism 
that soils those of to-day, and is any form of 
athletic exercise quite so wholesome as that 
practised by nearly ten generations of Penin- 
sular folkfi 

^ Fox hunting was a favorite sport from colonial days 
up to comparatively recent times. Some of the farms on 
Bohemia Manor were held upon, leases one provision of which 
was that the farmer should keep two hunting hounds such 
as should be part of "the cry of hoimds" kept by the lord of 
the manor, a clearly feudal privilege of the latter. Fifty years 
ago old fox hounds lounged about many a village street, to be 
used for "fox drives." The Cooch family and their neighbors 
in Pencader Hundred, Delaware, rode to hounds for genera- 
tions, even up to the Civil War period, and later. Packs of 
hounds are still kept up in parts of lower Delaware. 

75 



^/ 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

Aquatic fowl swarmed in all the waters of 
the Peninsula up to the middle of the last cen- 
tury, and still use in great numbers the waters 
of lower Delaware and the Eastern Shore. 
Many colonial witnesses testify to the amazing 
numbers of ducks, geese, swan, shore-birds of 
various kinds, with quail, snipe, and four-footed 
game wherever woodland or thicket afforded 
cover. Voyagers on the Eastern Shore rivers 
late in the Seventeenth Century rowed or sailed 
their boats amid thousands of wild fowl sitting 
upon the water, and saw them rise in clouds that 
fairly darkened the sun. The complaint of 
Augustine Herrman's Labadist visitors of 1679 
that they could not sleep at the manor house 
because of the noise made by geese and ducks 
indicated an experience that many an unaccus- 
tomed European must have had in that new 
land. The Labadist missionaries professed to 
be shocked at the hard work imposed, upon 
slaves and redemptioners by Herrman and his 
neighbors, but John Alsop, himself a redemp- 
tioner, though also a university student, gives 
a very different account of conditions in the 
mid-sixties of the same centurj'' as he saw them 
on the Western Shore. ''In winter time, which 
lasts but three months," he writes, ''they do 
little or no work or improvement, save cutting 

76 



HUNTING, FISHING, YACHTING 

wood to make good fires to sit by, unless tlieir 
ingenuity will prompt them to hunt deer or 
bear, or recreate themselves in fowling to 
slaughter swans, geese, and turkeys, which the 
country affords in most plentiful manner. For 
every servant has a gun, powder, and shot 
allowed him, to sport him withal on all holidays 
and leisure time if he be capable of using it or 
be willing to learn." 

So abundant was game of all kinds that 
colonial folk and their descendants for at 
least three generations were recklessly waste- 
ful of such natural wild riches. In early days, 
every coast dweller could shoot aquatic fowl 
from his own grounds. As the birds became 
wary of the shore, heavily loaded swivel-guns 
were mounted on canoes, and scores of fowl 
were killed at a single shot. As the birds grew 
more and more timid, and found refuge far 
from shore, ingenious methods of approach 
were invented. The swivel-gun was at length 
outlawed, though used unlawfully by pot- 
hunters until comparatively recent years. A 
craft called the ' ' coffin boat, ' ' with a swivel-gun 
mounted in the bow was used at night in the 
upper Chesapeake to kill the sleeping fowl, 
especially the canvasback, which had come to 
be a favorite in city markets. Holes were cut 

77 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 



in the ice at the accustomed feeding places of 
the birds, so that a considerable surface of 
water was bared, and to these places the wild 
fowl were attracted by decoys, to be shot from 
blinds at short range. Dogs were trained to 
frisk on the shore above and below the blinds 
so as to excite the curiosity of the birds and 
toll them within gunshot. Such dogs could be 
managed by signals from the blind. Sometimes 
red flannel or a gay handkerchief was wound 
round the dog to make him more seductive. A 
ramrod with a red rag atop often supplied the 
place of the capering dog. The sinkboat, float- 
ing almost at the surface of the water, is still 
tolerated in Maryland with restrictions, though 
prohibited by Virginia. 

Two generations ago the eggs of fowl nest- 
ing upon the Eastern Shore marshes were some- 
times recklessly destroyed by irresponsible boys. 
The late James B. Dilworth, a business man of 
New York, but a Delawarean by birth, who 
never through a life-long exile lost his native 
flavor of the Peninsula, believed that the rela- 
tive scarcity of migratory fowl in waters where 
they once swarmed was due less to reckless 
slaughter than to the robbing of their nests in 
the far North by men who shipped the eggs 
South for use by confectioners. 

78 



HUNTING, FISHING, YACHTING 

^^— I ■ I ■■I I ■— ^M^^-^^.^ I ■■— ^M^ I ■ ■■■III, ■— ^^^^^^^^.^ 

Whatever the causes that within the memory 
of living men, have reduced the number of wild 
fowl in the waters of the Peninsula, the situa- 
tion has been met by an ever increasing strict- 
ness of regulative statutes as to seasons and 
methods of hunting. Maryland has a license 
fee for gunners from other states, and prohi- 
bits the shipping of wild fowl out of the state 
by pot-hunters. All over the Peninsula the 
shooting season has been shortened, and farm- 
ers commonly **post" their lands to prevent 
trespass * ' with gun and dog. ' ' By the time the 
statutes regulating the slaughter of wild fowl 
had been enacted geese had become scarce in 
many parts of the Peninsula, and swans were 
somewhat rare in most local waters. Never- 
theless, the lower Chesapeake and its tributa- 
ries, the Atlantic coast of Accomack and North- 
ampton, and parts of Southern Delaware are 
still among the best ducking ''grounds" in the 
country. A few miles below Ocean City on the | 
Atlantic coast of Maryland and on down the 
coast of Accomack and Northampton are 
found plenty of black ducks and mallards, 
with fewer sprig-tails, redheads and can- 
vasbacks. President Cleveland and other 
occupants of the White House have delighted in 
this region. Here, too, there is good Autumn 

79 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 



shooting for yellow-legs, and black-breasted 
plover, but regulative laws change from year 
to year, and strangers do well to be sure as to 
these limitations. An acquaintance with local 
persons who can direct the visitor to suitable 
places is a necessity to success in hunting wild 
fowl on the Peninsula, and it must be remem- 
bered that local justices weep not when fining 
alien delinquents for violation of the game laws.^ 

Chincoteague Island is a good starting point 
for the gunner in the Atlantic waters of Acco- 
mack. So too is Watchapreague for the 
Atlantic coast of either Accomack or North- 
ampton. Onancock gives access to the Chesa- 
peake side of Accomack and Northampton. 
Deal's Island in Tangier Sound, between 
the mouths of the Wicomico and Manokin 
rivers, lies within easy reach of marshy 
islands frequented by great numbers of ducks. 
There is still good ducking at Kent Island, so 
famous for its wild fowl in the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury and earlier. Elkton, Cecil County, lies near 
marshes where the railbird and other small fowl 
are still plentiful. Lewes, Delaware, is near good 

* Non-residents pay a license fee of $10.50 for the privilege 
of shooting in Maryland. A note of inquiry to the B.C. and 
A. RR. Co., Pier one, Pratt Street, Baltimore, is likely to 
bring valuable information to the untaught stranger who would 
shoot in the Chesapeake waters. 

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ducking ground in Rehoboth Bay and Indian 
River Bay. Many ducks and some geese use 
the waters of Delaware Bay, ita inlets and 
creeks, but this region is within easy approach 
from Philadelphia and Wilmington, so that the 
number of gunners is large. Quail are plentiful 
in lower Delaware and in most of the Eastern 
Shore counties, especially those of the far 
Southern part of the Peninsula, where much of 
the land is wooded. 

Drum fish, sea trout, croakers, sea bass, 
blue fish and king fish are caught at Ocean 
City. Sinepuxent Bay, the name given to a 
somewhat indefinite length of the shallows be- 
hind the long Peninsula of Assateague skirting 
the Atlantic coast from the South-eastern cor- 
ner of Delaware to the Virginia line, has white 
perch, small black bass, and a variety of other 
fish. Tilghman's Island and Deal's Island of the 
Chesapeake are famous for trout, spot, taylors. 
Bellevue on the Tred Avon River and such 
neighboring places as Oxford and Royal Oak 
are starting points for fishermen. White perch, 
croakers, rock, and blue fish frequent these 
waters. The Pocomoke and Occohannock rivers 
have excellent fish of many varieties. Crisfield 
is another gateway for fishermen. Havre de 
Grace in the upper Chesapeake, once the most 

6 81 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

I I ,11, II I I !■ I M ■ !■ IIIMII II I ■ — * 

famous region for canvasback ducks, is a West- 
ern Shore port whence fishermen may approach 
excellent fishing, though here competition is hot 
because the region has been long famous, and 
Baltimore, Washington, and Philadelphia are 
within easy reach by express train. Betterton, 
on the lovely Sassafras River of the Eastern 
Shore is a port easily reached by steamboat 
from Philadelphia, and here is excellent fishing 
in the Chesapeake. Grove Point, a cape imme- 
diately North of the Sassafras, used to be a 
favorite camping ground for fishermen. To 
wake at dawn upon that spot, see one's little 
boat arock on the misty-gray waves of the bay, 
and watch the new-risen sun burn Betterton 
and its river to a passion of splendor is alone 
worth the trouble of the undertaking. Eastern 
Shoremen care little for fresh-water fishing, but 
there are mill-ponds in rural Delaware, some of 
them in effect beautiful lakes of considerable 
size, that have been stocked with bass and pike, 
and are much used by local fishermen. 

From April to June, and for many weeks in 
mid- Autumn the Chesapeake is a yachtman's 
paradise. Natives, indeed, find even the mid- 
Summer Chesapeake delightful. Then it is that 
local fishermen hold their regattas, and the 
yachtsman who attends may see instructive ex- 

82 



HUNTING, FISHING, YACHTING 



hibitions of nautical skill. St. Clement's Bay, 
one of the most beautiful inlets of the lower 
Potomac, is the scene on Sundays and holidays 
of vastly interesting impromptu regattas in 
which sometimes a score of fishing boats par- 
ticipate. The best approach from the North to 
the Chesapeake cruising grounds is by way of 
the inside passage and the Chesapeake and 
Delaware Canal, which last water-way the 
United States Government is improving, so that 
it will admirably serve the turn of yachtsmen as 
of commercial craft. Charts of the Chesapeake 
and its tributaries, which show soundings, light- 
houses, and all necessary nautical indications, 
may be had for a trifle upon application to the 
Coast and Geodetic Survey Office at Washing- 
ton. Between the Bay itself and the rivers of 
the two shores there is pleasant cruising for 
weeks together. 

Few of the Eastern Shore rivers are navi- 
gable for above 25 miles, and the charts be- 
speak the difficulties of navigation in the upper 
reaches of these streams. As to the Western 
Shore rivers, the largest afford weeks of mild 
adventure, with many small ports and a perpet- 
ually changing panorama of sea and shore. The 
Potomac, the Rappahannock, the James, and the 
Patuxent may occupy a yachtsman for weeks in 

8S 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

a region of exhanstless historic interest. Some 
of the best places for supplies are on the Eastern 
Shore. Crisfield has a difficult harbor, well 
buoyed, and the town is an outfitting place for 
thousands of- fishing vessels. Cambridge has 
a safe and approachable harbor with abundant 
food supplies. Baltimore is the best port of 
supply for the upper Chesapeake, Norfolk for 
the lower. A local pilot is almost a necessity 
for yachtsmen who would explore the fascinat- 
ing small streams. 



CHAPTER VI 
HOUSES AND HOMES 



DOMESTIC architecture on the Peninsula 
has gone through almost three centuries 
of changing needs and tastes as influenced by 
changing conditions. Early settlers, short of 
tools and of skilled labor, naturally built their 
first shelters of the materials at hand easiest 
shaped to their needs. Even leaders and rulers 
at first were little better housed than others. 
Log houses must have served most purposes in 
the first decade of a settlement, must have been 
common in the first quarter-century. Not a few 
of the early houses were incorporated in the 
improved dwellings of the prosperous. Living 
men not very old recall log houses surviving in 
town and country less than fifty years ago, come 
down from colonial days, and many such still 
stand. The pleasant old Russell house at New- 
ark, where Parson Arthur Kirlrvvood Russell 
lived for the first half of the last century, and 
where his son-in-law, The Rev. Dr. Hugh 
Hamill read Greek with his feet on the fender 
or beneath the trees of the front garden, when 

85 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

torn down two or three years ago proved to be 
made partly of logs. Many old houses are of 
the English thatched cottage type, though shin- 
gles supply the place of thatch. The latter 
survives in the cow-sheds, which are crudely 
roofed with cornstalks instead of straw. Some 
houses on Kent Island are of the English Seven- 
teenth Century farmhouse type, with dormer 
windows, but without thatch. Cheap wood 
determined the use of shingles.^ 

Few great houses, indeed few considerable 
houses, were built in Delaware, not very mauy 
on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where so- 
cial life and ideals were influenced by the feudal 
character of the proprietor's relation to the 
Palatinate, until the second quarter of the 
Eighteenth Century. The like is true of the 
Virginia counties, where even local magnates 
lived in little wooden houses. It must be 
remembered that George Washington was born 
in a simple farmhouse, bred until the age of 
ten in another ; that an early house of the Lees 
is a brick building of moderate size and plain 
exterior. The oldest houses at the upper end 

^ The noble Italian relative of Dr. Johnson's Mrs. Paradise, 
said, as he looked round upon the beauties at a ball in 
Williamsburg, Va., "How can such angels live in such hovels?" 
To the eye of one accustomed to Italian palaces, the big wooden 
house of the old Dominion capital must have looked crude. 

86 



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HOUSES AND HOMES 



of the Peninsula, as at the lower, prove the sim- 
plicity of Seventeenth Century domestic stan- 
dards. Naaman's-on-Delaware, perhaps the 
oldest house in the state, is partly a defensive 
block-house dating from 1654, partly a dwelling 
of simple but pleasing type built in 1720. 
According to the records of the present occu- 
pants, who maintain at Naaman's a popular 
house of entertainment, Stuyvesant's ships 
shelled the block-house in 1655, when the Dutch 
* * conquered ' ' New Sweden. The place was taken 
by the Indians in 1671, and by the British in 
1776. The Robinson family, American patriots 
of the Revolution, occupied the house from 1738 
until after the middle of the Nineteenth Century. 
Light Horse Harry Lee captured here the 
officers of a British squadron. Washington, 
LaFayette, Mad Anthony Wayne, and others 
of the Patriot army frequented Naaman's. The 
place had a later sinister reputation as a duel- 
ling ground. It is now a scene of peace and 
charm, with a^ riverward outlook, a pleasant gar- 
den, and a quantity ,of antique furnishings. 
Naaman's could be matched for simplicity by 
many old houses in Accomack and Northamp- 
ton. Cross Manor on the Western Shore, now 
the home of the Grasens, said to be the oldest 
house in Maryland, a charmingly unpreten- 

87 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

tious thing of weathered brick facing St. Inigo 's 
Creek where it enters the St. Mary's, some- 
what suggests the general aspect of Sulgrave 
Manor, the simple English homestead of 
the Washingtons. 

Georgian houses of the Eastern Shore built 
from about the middle of the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury onward, often of brick, sometimes of wood, 
are large, dignified, and apt to be well propor- 
tioned, unless they have been accretions from 
an earlier time. Those of the latter type some- 
times include the incongruous union of true 
Georgian additions with survivals of the 
Seventeenth Century large farm house or small 
manor house. Some of the strictly Georgian 
type, built of brick and sturdily erect in spite 
of ' ' eating time, ' ' are apt to be a trifle gaunt. The 
Georgian type was reproduced all over the 
Peninsula up to the middle of the last century, 
often on a small scale, and sometimes without 
regard to proper proportions. 

At Chestertown one of many delightful sur- 
vivals is the house of Wilbur W. Hubbard, 
dating from 1732, of historic interest, and a 
beautiful instance of Georgian domestic archi- 
tecture at its best, both as to outward form and 
restrained interior decoration and furnishing. 
The house has been preserved and restored 

88 



HOUSES AND HOMES 



with jealous care, so that it looks to-day much 
as it must have looked when occupied by a 
local great man of nearly two centuries ago. 

Some great country houses in Maryland and 
Virginia have been described and illustrated in 
volumes prepared by antiquarians or architects,^ 
so that this book does not attempt a full treat- 
ment of the subject, but merely exemplifies a few 
types, as Beverly in Worcester county, begun 
in 1774 by Littleton Dennis, furnished by his 
widow during the Revolutionary War, and since 
occupied by the Dennis family. 

This house illustrates the simpler Georgian 
style, without applied ornament. On one side 
it faces the Pocomoke River across a gently 
sloping lawn. On the landward side is the pub- 
lic approach to a dignified front through an 
avenue shaded by great trees. The briclrwork 
of the house is substantial, the doorway to the 
lawn is ornamented with an elaborate wrought- 
iron structure from which once hung a lantern 
that served as beacon to some miles of the 
river, and the interior is apportioned in digni- 
fied rooms, many of them wainscoted, and all 
furnished with heirlooms of handsome fashion. 

" Historic Virginia Homes and Churches. Robert A. 
Lancaster, Jr., Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. 

Colonial Mansions of Maryland and Delaware, John 
Martin Hammond, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. 

89 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

John Dennis, the immigrant ancestor of him that 
built Beverly, came to Accomack in 1635. Bev- 
erly stands on a tract patented in 1669 under 
the name of, * ' Thrum-Capped. ' ' Now ' * thrum ' ' 
means literally the end of a weaver's thread, 
but its figurative meaning, used in the name of 
the tract, may perhaps be guessed from a line of 
John Sylvester, the old English poet, *'Thrum- 
m'd halfe with ivie, halfe with crisped moss."^ 
Two other Beverlys were built, one in Accomack 
county, one in Somerset, by relatives of the 
Dennis family. 

Another Eighteenth Century house, that of 
Daniel W. Corbit at Odessa, Delaware, built 
about the same time as Beverly, and ever since 
owned and occupied by the Corbits, has an ad- 
mirable street door, and most agreeable rooms, 
decorated with handsomely carved woodwork. 
It is a matter of industrial interest that Mr. 
Corbit has the original building-specifications 
of the house, with the cost of materials and 
workmanship in minute detail. The house was 
built shortly after the building of Drawyer's 
Presbyterian Church, another example of what 
skilled mechanics of that day could do with 
brick and wood. 

'An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, by 
Ernest Weekley. 

90 



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HOUSES AND HOMES 



Northern Delaware and the hill country of 
Cecil county Maryland, as of South Eastern 
Pennsylvania, have many old stone houses, the 
best of them showing the artistic skill with 
which early masons, as even later, could lay a 
wall of field stone or quarried stone not formal- 
ized by cutting, so as to assure a continuous 
surface pleasing in effect, but cleverly varied 
to avoid the betrayal of any artificially designed 
pattern. Isaac E. Pennypacker of Philadelphia 
holds that stone was used as building-material 
in Northern Delaware and Southern Pennsyl- 
vania not only because suitable building stone 
was plentiful, but because also there was lime- 
stone to furnish cheap mortar. Thus, he says 
was bred a race of skilled masons loving their 
trade as allied to the fine arts. Masons from 
the region are still called to build walls in 
other parts of the country. Perhaps Welsh 
and Scotch immigrants to Delaware and South- 
ern Pennsylvania fetched with them the tradi- 
tion of skilled mason work. Many Scotch masons 
used to come and go between Scotland and New 
York, working on this side in open weather, 
wintering in Scotland. 

Slavery helped to determine the form of 
many dwellings on the Peninsula. The New 
Englanders, whose teeth have sympathetically 

91 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

chattered for three hundred years in memory 
of that freezing, praying, dying first winter at 
Plymouth, early tended to bring dwelling and 
and outhouses under one roof, so that the good 
man could go comfortably in slippers from his 
living-room fireside to woodshed and stable. 
He did not literally sleep with the pigs, but he 
slept under the same far-stretching roof with 
horse and cow, though many partitions sepa- 
rated the human sleeper and his sleeping beasts. 
Now the Eastern Shoreman and the Delawar- 
ean were not afraid of their own climate, so 
that they saw no reason for roofing themselves 
in with the beasts of the field. Even the kitchen 
was often built as '* quarters" a few yards 
apart from the dwelling, spoken of by the slaves 
as 'Hhe house." That meats should not cool 
between the fire and the master's table, house 
and kitchen were connected by a low enclosed 
passage called the ''corridor," which in time 
was often capped by a second story, so that 
house, corridor and kitchen suggested three 
houses of varying height joined as one struc- 
ture. As climatic conditions did not demand that 
the whole domestic establishment be brought 
under one roof, the dwelling was flanked by 
a group of outhouses — smoke-house, ice-house, 
granary, wood-house — so that the whole, with 

92 



HOUSES AND HOMES 



its array of gables and pent-roofs set at 
odd angles, presented somewhat the aspect of a 
small village, and needed only a palisade encir- 
cling all to repeat the ancestral Saxon *Hun," 
forerunner of the ' ' town. ' ' In county towns the 
local lawyer's office was often a small house 
within the domestic enclosure. Here, amid con- 
genial tobacco smoke, and dust that no house- 
wife or maid dared disturb, the man of law 
received his clients and studied their cases. No 
doubt liis deeper meditations were at times 
pleasantly interrupted by unprofessional call- 
ers, and somewhere beliind Blackstone or Kent 
lurked a bottle of cheering contents to be shared 
mth friends before the glowing hearth. Per- 
haps the *' office" also had its uses as a peaceful 
refuge in stormy domestic weather. 

In many Delaware and Eastern Shore houses, 
heat was conserved in Winter and mitigated in 
Summer by the close shingling of the outer walls 
frcm groundsills to eaves. Many of these old 
shingled houses are weathered to a delicious 
soft gray, nature's slow but inexpensive method 
of decoration. "The Judges" at Georgetown, 
for about a century usually occupied by the 
resident judge, is a shingled Georgian house of 
moderate size and pleasing simple decoration. 
Judge Henry C. Conrad, as its occupant for a 

93 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

dozen years past, enriched its interior with a 
large collection of old furniture, pottery, prints 
and other pictures, most of them picked up in 
Delaware, and illustrative of social and per- 
sonal history, a museum of great local interest. 

The Blandy house at Newark, now owned 
and occupied by Eben Frazer, President of the 
ToAvn Council, though not of colonial date, is a 
modified Georgian brick structure with a recent 
afterthought of ample porches such as are often 
seen on the Eastern Shore, intended to secure 
at all hours of the Summer day a well shaded 
outdoor retreat. The Blandys, English three 
generations ago, were kinsmen of the Blandy 
family, wine-growers of Madeira, with which 
branch it is traditional to present each son of 
the house at marriage with a pipe of the ma- 
tured island wine. Almost the last bottle of one 
such pipe was drunk {pace Mr. Volstead!) a 
few years ago at the house of Alexander F. 
Williamson in Philadelphia. 

During the long and vicious "American 
architectural reign of terror ' ' too many builders 
on the Peninsula scorned the sound old tradi- 
tion before their eyes. Then it was that the 
jigsaw wrought its fretful trail over ten thou- 
sand house fronts. Eastlake porches glared 
with gaunt elbows at like neighbors across 

94 



HOUSES AND HOMES 



the way. Graceful old Georgian dwellings or 
newer Italian villas were capped with coldly 
slated incongruous mansards. Bay windows 
suddenly bulged where before a flat wall had 
given serenity to a house front. Foolish conical 
towers and minarets made otherwise plain dwel- 
lings ridiculous, and the insect-leg type of shin- 

gledporch pillar was popular. Pressed brick gave 
to many a house the final touch of forbidding 
primness and prophesied an interior smug mth 
Ingram carpets, littered with lambrequins, and 
hideous with the tasteless miscellany of the 
** what-not." 

Sanity and taste reasserted themselves, at 
hrst feebly, between the Centennial Exposition 
of 1876 and the last decade of the Nineteenth 
Century. The good folk at length began to 
to wonder why they had sold their heirlooms or 
sent them limping to the garret that their places 
might be supplied by stuffed plush and fumed 
oak. Many new houses of sound architecture 
were built, and some old ones were intelligently 
restored, though only a conflagration could have 
brought most villages back to modest simplicity. 
With the World War and the chill of succeeding 
hard times old houses fell into further decay and 
painting was neglected, until an inexpressible 
shabbmess fell like a drab mantle over whole 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

communities. Already the bungalow had begun 
its ravages, and now in some communities lit- 
tle else was built. Such one-story Oriental cot- 
tages seemed to spring up in the night, often 
wrought of incongruous materials, sometimes 
giving what were intended for homes the casual 
air of a week-end picnic hovel, at others staring 
stolidly with heavy stone foundations and walls, 
above which appeared the triviality of embroid- 
ered shingles. 

Whatever the character of the house, rude 
abundance characterized the early colonial 
table, with game as an essential part of the 
menu. Perhaps the redemptioners really did 
rebel at terrapin more than thrice a week. Fish, 
fresh for most of the year, but smoked, pick- 
led, or otherwise preserved for winter use, 
were furnished to all, the smoked, pickled 
and otherwise preserved especially for the 
slaves. As game became less plentiful pork 
and fish supplied its place at the "quarters," 
for mast-fed hogs roamed the woodlands, yield- 
ing deliciously sweet hams and shoulders, spare 
ribs, sausage, scrapple. Hospitality was a 
matter of course, but dwellers near ferries and 
other places frequented by travellers were fain 
to obtain privileges as "licensed victuallers," 
because so many claimed asylum. 

96 



HOUSES AND HOMES 



With growing wealth and leisure came 
increased fastidiousness of palate, but the tra- 
dition of an abundant table persisted, as it still 
persists, if somewhat chastened by the bitter 
lessons of the World War. Characteristic dishes 
of the Peninsula became famous long ago even 
beyond the Chesapeake country and above 
Mason and Dixon's Line. The official cook-book 
of Delaware was issued, and far too long de- 
layed, about a quarter of a century ago. As 
for the private and unprinted recipes of house- 
wives the Peninsula over, these would make a 
priceless gourmet's library. Maryland fried 
chicken is know/r all over the continent, 
famed even in Europe, though rarely found in 
pristine perfection except in the "land o'cakes" 
between the bays, or where some sad exile from 
the region painfully breathes alien air and 
jealously maintains his native culinary tradi- 
tions. As to hot cakes, they flourish mightily 
from end to end of the Peninsula. You may 
have glorified buckwheat cakes, fragrant from a 
greaseless griddle, foam-light, not crudely 
freckled and disfigured with inky blotches, but 
delicately golden-bronze or blonde, and war- 
ranted to cure dyspepsia, chronic or acute. 
Better still are corncakes, like the coiffure of 
Horace's Roman beauty, simple with neatness. 

7 97 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

They come sizzling from the oven, but with no 
slightest taint of acrid grease, never above three 
inches in diameter, preferably less, light, al- 
most wafer-tliin, in complexion from warm 
brown to delicate amber, and edged with a 
deliciously crisp lace-work, itself a triumph of 
the decorative art. You eat the first two dozen 
or so with fresh butter, perhaps as many more 
with spoonfuls from the rich brown sea of 
gravy surrounding those perfect sausages, and 
finally a moderate stack from the last runnings 
of the batter, with honey, or with syrup from the 
native sorghum, or from the half-alien maple. 
Cornpone, undefiled by any sweetening, una- 
dulterated with wheat flour, a mere soft, but 
thoroughly cooked remnant of dough, slightly 
moist, between stout upper and nether coatings 
of the same material crisped to light brown 
for cruncliing, is ''a tiling to thank God on." 
As to spoon-bread, it should banish from the 
breakfast table all alluringly named and adver- 
tised cereals that tickle the palate, but leave 
body unnourished, soul unsatisfied. The Mary- 
land biscuit, wliich looks like a doorknob and 
tastes ilike the ambrosia of the gods, should 
be eaten hot, and opened delicately with a fork, 
not rudely with a knife. Dr. John J. Black of 
New Castle completely vindicated hot bread 

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HOUSES AND HOMES 



from the charge of unwholesomeness by pointing 
out the immediately self-evident fact that such, 
properly cooked and promptly served, is the 
wholesomest of all breads, as having been 
freed by heat of dangerous germs which have 
had no chance to return and work their evil will 
before the product is eaten. 

A mere catalogue of culinary delicacies 
native to the Peninsula would make a long 
chapter, but it must suffice to mention here a 
few such as candied sweet potatoes, ring muf- 
fins, frozen peaches, to hint the two-score 
styles of cooking oysters, the innumerable ways 
of preparing crabs, terrapin, clams, the richness 
and delicacy of melons, berries, and native 
wild fruits. Finally, there is (or was, alas 
and alas!) the national drink of Delaware, 
"peach-an '-honey." In spite of constitutional 
amendments bees are still free to roam in pur- 
suit of innocent plunder, and flowers yet bloom 
early and late upon this favored Peninsula. 
Furthermore, it is discreetly whispered that 
here and there in deepest Sussex, and possibly 
elsewhere, safe from prjdng eyes and sniffing 
noses, still lurk stores of precious liquor long 
ago distilled from native fruit, and forever fra- 
grant with the tantalizing aroma of sun-bathed 
autumnal orchards. Experts declare that 

99 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

taken *'neat" this rarest of Delaware's prod- 
ucts warms the inner man but burns not, that 
mixed judiciously mth the smooth ambrosial 
honey of the hive, it rivals the richest distilla- 
tions of ancient monkish alembics, is as harm- 
less as mother's milk. 

y 



CHAPTER VII 

EARLY CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS 

MOVEMENTS 

A SUCCESSION of what may be called 
happy accidents made most of the Penin- 
sula in its early colonial history the peculiar 
home of religious liberty. This condition 
existed, be it remembered to the eternal credit 
of those in power, during most of the period 
when Europe was devastated by the politico- 
religious Thirty Years War. The Catholic 
Calverts, as proprietors of Maryland, were 
nobly tolerant of all sects, denying to Protes- 
tants neither freedom of worship nor full 
participation in civil government, a liberality 
later ill requited. William Penn, although he 
found himself in litigation mth his Catholic 
neighbors over territory and jurisdiction, did not 
discriminate against their religion, and was tol- 
erant of all Protestant sects. Wliile yet the 
Quakers were under ban in England, Old and 
New, a quarter of a century before Penn 
founded Philadelphia, they were freely preach- 
ing unmolested in Delaware and on the Eastern 
Shore of Maryland. The civil powers in Mary- 

101 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

land during the ascendancy of the Anglican 
establishment sought, indeed to discourage dis- 
sent, and discriminated against the Catholics, 
but Makemie, who had founded his early Presby- 
terian congregations on the Eastern Shore be- 
fore the Anglican church was established in 
Maryland, continued his ministrations after that 
event, and after Lord Cornbury at New York 
had unjustly imprisoned him, and even more un- 
justly fined him for preaching within his lord- 
ship's jurisdiction.^ 

A liberal Anglican rector at Dover enter- 
tained Asbury, showing him the warmest 
Christian fellowship. Even the Labadist mys- 
tics seem to have found as long a peaceful 
possession on Bohemia Manor as their Euro- 

' With the incoming of William and Mary as British 
sovereigns the Church of England was established in the 
Palatinate, and supported by taxes levied on all. The Pres- 
byterians and other dissenting sects bitterly resented the 
requirement that they leave their church doors unlocked, 
and the tax of 40 pounds of tobacco annually to support 
churches they did not attend. These laws continued in force 
until the Revolutionaiy War, though they were in some details 
modified. Blasphemy and denial of the Holy Trinity were 
punishable at the third offense by death "without benefit of 
clergy," a law in effect until 1820, though no Jew or Unitarian 
suffered the extreme penalty. Hardly j'et have the Presby- 
terians ceased to feel aggrieved at the Anglican establishment, 
and not many years ago, they rarely entered Episcopal churches 
in the lower Eastern Shore except for the weddings and 
funerals of friends. 

102 



EARLY CHURCHES 



pean brethren found when most happily placed. 
Zealous the Jesuits were in Maryland, and their 
records tell with pious elation of the "father" 
who crept to the bedside of a dying man when 
his Protestant watchers were off guard, re- 
ceived him into Mother Church, and adminis- 
tered to him extreme unction. Lord Baltimore, 
indeed, was finally forced to curb the zeal of his 
Jesuit fellow Catholics. The peace that followed 
the Tliirty Years War left a bitterness shared 
even by the new settlements in the wilderness of 
the Peninsula, though there were no martyrs to 
the cause of religious liberty. The Calverts, pain- 
fully lessoned in persecution, and needing colo- 
nists to maketheir dominion profitable, welcomed 
Protestants and Catholics alike. Augustine 
Herrman's will, written about 1682, had a con- 
tingent provision for the founding of a Protes- 
tant school on Bohemia Manor beneath the 
very nose of his Catholic suzerain. 

As a matter of fact, in spite of toleration, 
Protestantism made no great growth upon the 
Peninsula above the Virginia line much before 
the opening of the Eighteenth Century. Even 
the establishment of the Anglican church after 
the English revolution of 1688 did not greatly 
strengthen Episcopacy on the Eastern Shore 
of Maryland, and did greatly intensify the zeal 

103 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

of dissenters. While yet Catholicism was 
oppressed with discriminatory laws in the 
British Isles, Bohemia Manor had its Jesuit 
Mission Church and monastery a few miles 
West of the Delaware line. St. Xavier's, as 
the church was called, still stands, and although 
the Jesuits have abandoned the station, the 
congregation of whites and blacks is still served. 
In the charming old graveyard of this churchly 
spot lie side by side in the final equality of 
death white masters and black slaves. The 
Jesuits themselves held slaves, as their records 
show, for **one of ours" is named as married 
from time to time, to a slave! of some parishioner. 
Far and wide stretch the glebe farms still owned 
by St. Xavier's, and in June the wheat ripples 
golden all about the church upon many a slightly 
rolling acre of the manor. 

According to the Rev. Thomas Yeo, Angli- 
can, there were in Maryland only four Protes- 
tant ministers in 1676, doubtless all Anglicans.^ 
He described the people, in a letter to the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, as irreligious and 
deeply sunk in vice. The last Dutch minister 
left New Castle in 1689, twenty-two years after 
the establishment of the Dutch church in that 
town, and twelve years after the first recorded 

^ Some authorities make him say only three. 

104 



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Anglican service there. Immannel Episcopal 
Church of New Castle was founded in 1689. 
As the Lutheran church was Episcopal in gov- 
ernment, the Anglican church naturally inher- 
ited some Lutheran parishes and buildings after 
the Swedish influence had perished. Old Swedes 
at Wilmington, dating from 1698, and the old- 
est Episcopal church building of Delaware in 
continuous use for religious services, has been 
in the hands of the Episcopal body since 1790. 
It is the one of the most interesting of the older 
American church buildings, though in its orig- 
inal form it was quite as bare within and 
severely simple without as the old brick churches 
of Accomack and Northampton dating back to 
early Anglican days on the Peninsula. It is 
interesting that between 1680 and 1710, the 
gospel was preached on the Peninsula in 
English, Dutch, Swedish, Welsh, and perhaps 
now and then in French and German. 

Hard were the lives of most Christian min- 
isters in the colonial Peninsula. The Eev. 
John Talbot, an Anglican, writes in September, 
1709: ''Poor Brother Jenkins at Appoquini- 
mink was baited to death by mosquitoes and 
blood-thirsty gal-nippers, which would not let 
him rest day or night till he got a fever and died 
of a calenture. Nobody that is not born there 

105 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

can abide there till he is mosquito-proof." 
Across the Delaware on the New Jersey shore, 
not many miles from the scene of Brother 
Jenkin's labors and sorrows, the Swedes about 
half a century earlier had deserted a fort, less 
from fear of the Dutch, it is said, than from a 
pest of mosquitoes. It was contemptuously 
called Myggenborg, which may be roughly trans- 
lated ''Mosquito Fort." At Stanton, at Dover, 
and at Lewes^ are old Episcopal churches. 
St. Anne's near Middletown, one of the oldest 
church buildings in Delaware, is distinguished 
for a beautiful fanlight window, an altar- 
cloth said to have been worked by the plump 
and pious hands of Queen Anne herself, a 
grove of noble oaks, and a site of rare charm at 
the edge of a wooded gorge sloping to a stream 
and thicket where the mocking bird tirelessly 
pours forth his dramatic lyrics. 

Episcopacy won its firm foothold on the 
Eastern Shore of Maryland somewhat earlier 
than in Delaware. St. Andrew's at Princess Anne 
dates from 1692, and Old Trinity in Dorchester 
from 1680. At Snow Hill, a citadel of early 
Presbyterianism, is a singularly charming old 
brick Episcopal church, simple in outward line, 

* Rector Turner at Lewes has tirelessly studied local his- 
tory, and contributed richly to our knowledge of early SuBsex, 
ecclesiastical and civil. 

106 



EARLY CHURCHES 



rudely buttressed against threatened ruin, 
almost bare of interior ornament, but richly 
decorated with a dense garment of English 
ivy, and high set above the street amid beauti- 
ful old trees. Here again Queen Anne was 
patroness, her gift a huge Bible. St. Paul's, a 
few miles from Chestertown, built in 1713, 
stands amid a grove of gigantic oaks, among 
the largest in Maryland. Church and grove 
owe their preservation to an ingenious scheme 
of endowTiient contrived and carried out by 
Wilbur W. Hubbard. 

One catches a glimpse of curious custom 
and conditions in the official records, about the 
middle of the Eighteenth Century, touching 
vacancies in two livings of Worcester County, 
each worth 30,000 pounds of tobacco annually. 
To one the Proprietor wished the Governor to 
appoint a Parson Harris, but the Governor 
declined to make the appointment upon the 
ground that the Parson had been accused of 
forgery in London. Some clerical wolves in 
sheep's clotliing came to the colonies through 
the errors of the Society for the Propagation 
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, but the early 
records of Plymouth show that even that 
strictly guarded flock did not escape the wolf's 
' * privy paw. ' ' Adventurers, clerical and other, 

107 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

found a sea voyage beneficial to a damaged 
reputation, as to unripe wine. 

Early Presbyterianism oil the Peninsula 
was largely an importation from Ireland and 
Scotland. Francis Makemie, born at Donegal 
of Scotch-Irish parents about 1658, educated 
at the University of Glasgow, and licensed to 
preach in 1681, was ordained the next year that 
he might bear Presbyterianism to America. 
There is a controversy as to whether or not 
a Presbyterian Church on Long Island ante- 
dates the earliest founded by Makemie on the 
Peninsula, but the claim of this region to be 
the cradle of Presbyterianism is stoutly main- 
tained by some careful church historians. At 
all events, Makemie, young, but seemingly 
mature of mind, and certainly of much more 
than common force, founded Rehoboth Church 
in Worcester County in 1683. The Makemie 
Memorial Church at Snow Hill, where he also 
founded a congregation in the same year with 
that of Rehoboth, is still one of the strongest 
Presbyterian bodies on the Peninsula. Reho- 
both Church of today, on the right bank of the 
Pocomoke River, dating from 1706, is possibly 
the oldest Presbyterian church building in the 
United States. Makemie founded Manokin 
Church at Princess Anne in 1683, the churches 

108 



EARLY CHURCHES 



of Pitt's Creek, and Salisbury. The present 
Manokin Church, an Eighteenth Century struc- 
ture with some modern improvements, is one 
of the most pleasing on the Eastern Shore. 
Makemie's tomb is in Accomack, his memory 
in the hearts of all Presbyterians. 

Presbyterianism has been strongest in the 
far South of Maryland, where the impulse of 
Makemie's propaganda was most marked, and 
the upper part of Delaware, where a consider- 
able body of Scotch and Scotch-Irish immigrants 
furnished the beginnings of many churches. 
Some of these congregations are older than the 
villages of the region, so that their churches 
were originally built in the country. Most of 
these Northern Delaware congregations date 
from the first decade of the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury or the last of the Seventeenth. Drawyers 
congregation now regularly worsliips at Odessa, 
but "The Friends of Old Drawyers," which 
corporation includes members of other denom- 
inations, has restored and preserved the 
interesting old building of 1773, with its simple 
brick exterior, its beautiful interior woodwork, 
and its impressive site on a bluff overlooking 
Drawj'ers Creek. Here on the first Sunday in 
June, hundreds gather to attend the annual 
commemorative service, and renew acquaint- 

109 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 



ance. The meeting, which attracts visitors from 
many parts of the Peninsula, and from regions 
hundreds of miles away, has proved so delight- 
ful that a like gathering now takes place on the 
following Sunday at St. Anne's Episcopal 
church below Middletown, and about five miles 
from Drawyers. Here Episcopalians and Pres- 
byterians meet in blissful forgetfulness of 
Makemie's imprisonment at the hands of Lord 
Cornbury, and of the tax in tobacco imposed 
upon Maryland Presbyterians to support the 
establishment. The Methodists have like meet- 
ings at some of their early churches. 

Long pastorates were an early Presbyterian 
tradition. Head-of-Christiana, near Newark, 
had only seven regular pastors in 190 years. 
White Clay Creek has a like tradition, and for 
more than a century-and-a-half, the two were 
served by the same pastors. Parson Magraw, 
a powerful ruler in Israel, of the Lower West 
Nottingham church in Northern Cecil County, 
long taught from the pulpit of the church, and 
from the desk of the Academy hard by. Dr. 
Samuel A. Gayley, a giant of Presbyterianism, 
also long served the same church, and admin- 
istered with profit the broad acres of his glebe 
farm. Those who remember Dr. Gayley 's ser- 
mon against card playing even yet sit down to 

110 



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DRAWYERS CHURCH, ERECTED 1 773 




PULPIT OF DRAWYERS CHURCH 



EARLY CHURCHES 



bridge with uncomfortable qualms. Let not the 
disciples of Mr. Volstead lay it up against 
early Presbyterians of the Peninsula that some 
of the laymen sold strong drink, and even some 
of the clergy disdained not the cup that both 
cheers and inebriates. One clerical brother of 
the Eighteenth Century was tried for tarrying 
too long at taverns on his way to Presbytery. 
The Peninsula is sometimes called the cradle 
of Methodism in the United States, though there 
were earlier Methodist churches elsewhere. 
That church was singularly fortunate in its 
founders, and also in that most of the pioneers 
came late enough to inherit the religious lib- 
erty established by the colonies in throwing off 
the British yoke. There stands in perfect pres- 
ervation, near the State highway in Murder- 
kill Hundred, Kent County, Delaware, Barratt's 
Chapel, a dignified brick building of rather 
large size, set amid delightful surroundings, 
one of the oldest Methodist places of worship 
in the United States, and one of rarely 
significant history. Philip Barratt deeded the 
land for the building, August 7, 1780, stipulating 
that from the pulpit of the church to be erected 
there should be preached ''no other doctrine 
than that contained in the Rev. John Wesley's 

Notes on the New Testament, and four volumes 

111 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

of sermons," a stipulation that seems to attrib- 
ute a sort of infallibility to the great founder 
of Methodism. Judge Henry C. Conrad, 
recently retired from the judiciary of Delaware 
after highly creditable ser^dce, retold about two 
years ago the history of Methodism in Kent 
County at a meeting held in Thomas Chapel, 
six miles West of Dover, built in 1779. Brown's 
Chapel, now Bethel, eight miles West of Sea- 
ford, dates from 1781. 

When the Rev. Francis Asbury came to 
America to preach Methodism there were 
already ten Methodist missionaries in the field. 
The earliest native Methodist preacher was 
Richard Owen of Maryland. According to a 
widely accepted belief, the meeting of Asbury 
and Bishop Thomas Coke at Barratt's Chapel, 
in November, 1784, was the occasion when the 
two concerted the plan for the systematic prop- 
agation of Methodism throughout the United 
States. Hence the claim of Barratt's Chapel 
to be the cradle of American Methodism. In 
that year Asbury was made Superintendent of 
America, being ordained by Coke. The latter 
was for a time his superior in the superintend- 
ency, but Asbury was the first person ordained 
to the episcopal office in the United States. He 
had reached America thirteen years before his 

112 



EARLY CHURCHES 



meeting with Coke at Barratt's Chapel, and 
only three years after the first Methodist 
Church had been built here, when the whole 
Methodist body numbered only 316 persons. 
As to Coke, being unsympathetic with the 
separation of the colonies from the mother 
country, he returned to England. Asbury, 
sympathetic with the revolution, remained in 
the United States, and thus helped to make 
Methodism a cliild of democracy. 

The sect spread rapidly throughout nearly 
the whole Peninsula, for Asbury proved an able 
organizer and propagandist. He not merely 
planned the building of churches, but he also 
divided the whole republic into districts, in each 
of which should be a classical academv. In 
1785, he founded the first Methodist college. 
He travelled during his ministry 270,000 miles, 
preached 16,000 sermons, and ordained 4000 
ministers to carry the propaganda to the remot- 
est corners of what must have seemed to him 
a vast empire. In few parts of that vast empire 
did Methodism grow faster than upon the Pen- 
insula, and especially in Delaware. According 
to statistics published in 1807, all Delaware had 
but twenty-four Presbyterian churches, four- 
teen Episcopal, and seven Baptist, but half the 
inhabitants of Kent County were Methodists, 

8 113 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

though there may have been guess-work in this 
estimate. In Kent, Asbury and his aides at- 
tracted to the church, some of the most conspicu- 
ous citizens. Camp meetings early became a 
means of spreading the new sect, and ** Father" 
Joshua Thomas, called the "Parson of the Isl- 
ands," and the ** Apostle of the Chesapeake," 
went up and down the bay through the first half 
of the Nineteenth Century, in his great bugeye, 
preaching Methodism to the islanders in the 
open air. He preached at Tangier Island to the 
British on their way to attack Baltimore, warn- 
ing them that they would fail, and preached to 
them again upon their return, after having failed 
and lost General Ross. To this day the islands of 
the Chesapeake are strongly Methodist, and the 
church has been for the hardy islanders a pow- 
erful civilizing and moralizing influence. 

John Wesley protested against the use of the 
title Bishop, by Asbury, but that good man was 
no arrogant pastor of his great flock. If noth- 
ing else, his sense of humor, shown in a quaint 
apology for his celibacy, would have saved him 
from arrogance in the pastoral office. Perhaps, 
remembering Wesley's protest against the title 
Bishop, Asbury dimly foresaw the schism that 
came in the Nineteenth Century to Methodism, 
as to Presbyterianism. The Methodist Protes- 
tant Church was organized by those who felt 

114 



EARLY CHURCHES 



that the bishops exercised too much authority. 
A bishopless organization, it clung to the Meth- 
odist creed, but set up a more democratic 
government than that of the parent body. The 
new sect, which attracted some highly intellec- 
tual and spiritual men to its ministry, never won 
great strength on the Peninsula. It has lived 
to see a softening of the episcopal authority 
that its founders deplored and feared. 

The Friends in proportion to their number 
have exercised a singularly powerful influence 
on the Peninsula, and they have made the con- 
temptuous term "Quaker" a title of honor. 
Their greatest strength was almost from the 
first in and about Wilmington, in which city 
each branch of the society has a large, plain, 
but seemly meeting-house. Elsewhere in Dela- 
ware the sect is weak, but there are little groups 
of Quakers from end to end of the Peninsula. 
Perhaps the smallest house of worship in Amer- 
ica is the Quaker meeting-house of brick, built at 
Odessa in 1685, and said to have been a station 
on the ''underground railroad," which carried 
escaped slaves to safety in Canada. There 
is another old Quaker meeting-house in Tal- 
bot, not far from Easton. Wherever the sect 
is found its folk stand for what is best in 
life, private or public. The Quakers of the Pen- 
insula have kept the peace through six wars, and 



116 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

have tended the sick and wounded in all those 
conflicts. They have also been a silent example 
of civil and domestic peace, of thrift, order, 
cleanliness, to their neighbors, of whatever creed 
or politics, and their philosophy of life, to which 
a war-weary world now seeks to give a grudging 
and qualified assent, shines with quiet light upon 
the placid face of many a man and woman 
speaking no longer the ''plain language," wear- 
ing no longer the badge of drab raiment. 

Innumerable small sects have found a foot- 
hold on the Peninsula, where the Catholic 
Calverts' early example of toleration has borne 
fruit for nearly three centuries. Catholic 
Maryland, by the way, set the example of evan- 
gelizing the slaves, and there are still colored 
men and women who go to confessional and 
keep the fast days and feast days of the elder 
Christian body. Methodism, with its strong 
human appeal, reached thousands of the colored 
people, and perhaps something spectacular in 
physical immersion has made many of them 
Baptists. In nothing has the progress of the col- 
ored people throughout the Peninsula appeared 
more impressively than in the improved educa- 
tion and character of their ministers, and the 
more seemly forms and conduct of their service. 

116 



CHAPTEE VIII 
BOHEMIA MANOR 



DELAWARE mil celebrate in the Spring 
of 1931, the opening of her fourth cen- 
tury as a land of civilization, the three-hun- 
dredth anniversary of tliei luckless Dutch 
settlement at Zwaanendael. It is highly prob- 
able, as Bancroft says in words quoted on a 
monument set up by Delaware at Lewes upon 
the site of Zwaanendael, that the State owes 
her political existence to this settlement. Linked 
with the long contentious history leading up to 
Delaware's emergence as a self-governing en- 
tity was that vigorous and interesting person, 
Augustine Herrman, first Lord of Bohemia 
Manor. He was the son of Ephraim Herrman, 
town councilman of Prague, and born, it is 
believed, in 1608. After service in war under 
the mighty Wallenstein, he became agent of a 
Dutch commercial house, and as such was pre- 
sent aboard the sliip Maecht Van Enkhuysen in 
1G33, when the Dutch arms were placed in token 
of ownership upon what is now the site of 
Philadelphia. Had the map that Herrman 



117 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

made, a generation later, for Lord Baltimore 
been accepted in full by the English Lord 
Chancellor, not only is it probable that there 
would never have been a State of Delaware, but 
the very site of Philadelphia would have fallen 
within the limits of Maryland, and all justly 
upon what many believe a fair reading of Lord 
Baltimore's charter. Herrman, shortly before 
making his map, urged the Dutch interpreta- 
tion of the charter, but soon took the view of 
that instrument best suited to his personal 
interests. He may have acted with clear con- 
science, and it must be remembered in judging 
him, that then the political fate of the region 
involved hung upon the uncertainties of Dutch 
and English rivalry. If Herrman deemed him- 
self an unprejudiced neutral, he could easily 
have believed one interpretation of a royal 
patent as good as another, for kings then under- 
took to give away empires in America mth no 
clearer right than that based on the luck of 
adventurous seamen, often hired aliens, in catch- 
ing the earliest glimpse of an uncharted shore, 
or taking the first peep into the turns of an 
unexplored estuary. 

England contested the Dutch claim to the 
North River, and also to the South, as the Dutch 
called the Delaware, but the power at Manhat- 

118 



BOHEMIA MANOR 



tan, having fixed itself in seeming security upon 
the former stream, warned all comers off the lat- 
ter. A disappointed Dutch officer, sometime Gov- 
ernor of Manhattan, Peter Minuit, led a Swedish 
colony to the forbidden South River in 1638, 
and founded what is now Wilmington, Avith the 
knowledge of all concerned that the Dutch 
would hold the undertaking trespass. Peter 
was born at Wesel on the Rhine, a German 
Protestant of French blood, who saw no reason 
why after losing his governorship under the 
Dutch, he, who had bought for them the island 
of Manhattan for $24, should not test their 
claim to the Delaware by taking service under a 
rival colonizing power, a hint that may have 
helped Herrman to a somewhat similar act. 

Herrman, indeed, like Minuit, was no Dutch- 
man, but singularly proud of being a Bohemian. 
His name indicates that he sprang from those 
German residents of Bohemia whose descend- 
ants even now are a problem to the new Czecho- 
slovakia. He had a fair education, as was to 
be expected of a well placed youth in a highly 
civilized land, a keen mind and energetic will, 
a spirit sturdy and adventurous. ' ' Adventurer' ' 
he was in the not unfavorable sense of the word 
then accepted, and like other such adventurers 
of early American exploration, Magellan, as 

119 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

well as Minuit, he lightly exchanged employ- 
ment, and even allegiance, if, indeed, he ever 
really owed allegiance to the Dutch state at 
home or at Manhattan. He came to his early 
maturity when nations and individuals were 
keenly alive to the opportunities of the New 
World, and not nice as to the means of seizing 
such opportunities for themselves. Taking and 
keeping went by the old rhymed rule. Already 
he was at home upon the sea, even though his 
native Bohemia has no sea coast outside 
Shakespeare's geography. As a resident of 
Manhattan, he rose to be a member of the coun- 
cil called ' ' The Nine Men. ' ' By this time also, 
he had a fair house and a pear orchard in Pearl 
Street, where now there are neither orchards 
nor yet fair houses. Stuyvesant put him in 
jail for a trivial act of insubordination, but 
needing a capable ambassador to Maryland, 
sent him thither. He knew his man, for Herr- 
man had gone on a like errand to those trouble- 
some good folk at Boston, whose fervor of 
spirit in the service of the Lord did not lessen 
a diligence in business somewhat disconcerting 
to their Dutch rivals in trade. 

Herrman was sent to Maryland, where he 
troubled the sleep of the Calverts by raising 
the once laid ghosts of the massacred colony at 

120 




HERRMAN AND HIS HORSE 




SHADED HIGHWAY NEAR BOHEMIA MANOR 




FARM YARD WITH THATCHED COW-SHED ON HERRMAN's AUGUSTINE MANOR 



BOHEMIA MANOR 



Zwaanendael, because Colonel Nathaniel Utie, 
from the Chesapeake Island base still named in 
honor of him, had ordered the Dutch out of the 
region below the Fortieth Parallel, had gone as 
far East, indeed, as New Amstel, soon to be 
rebaptized New Castle, with swaggering 
threats. The Marylanders and the Dutch had 
met in skirmishes, but the little war had caused 
probably less bloodshed than inkshed, certainly 
less rattle of artillery than of tongues. Herrman 
reached Maryland by way of New Amstel and 
the narrow throat of the Peninsula, in the Fall 
of 1659, come to protest and negotiate. With 
him came, some say as interpreter. Resolved 
Waldron, whose Christian name may really 
have been one since famed in Manhattan and 
elsewhere, to wit, Roosevelt. At Patuxent, 
Herrman saw, apparently for the first time, the 
Latin form of Lord Baltimore's charter, a copy 
of which was submitted to the ambassadors by 
Governor Fendall. Herrman had enough Latin, 
and intelligence to scent a flaw in the phrase 
"hactenus inculta," as meaning ''hitherto unoc- 
cupied by civilized men, ' ' an interpretation seem- 
ingly justified by the context, which referred to 
the Indian inhabitants of the land as barbar- 
ous. The Marylanders still contend, and some 
lawyers and historians agree with them, that this 

121 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

phrase was merely descriptive, not restrictive. 
Herrman and Waldron dined with Philip 
Calvert, brother of Lord Baltimore, and Secre- 
tary of the Palatinate, before holding official 
conference with Governor Fendall, and imme- 
diately before meeting Calvert, Herrman had 
visited Kent Island, where he had a perhaps 
illuminating talk with Magistrate Wicks, a man 
bearing a name still honorably known on the 
Eastern Shore. He was too late to meet a man 
of somewhat his own type, William Claiborne, 
first settler of the island. On October 16, the 
Dutch ambassadors, after a late dinner, held 
high and hot debate with Fendall, Calvert, the 
warlike Utie, and others. The Marylanders 
went back to Ealeigh and his colony in North 
Carolina to support their claim, and Herrman 
went further back to the Spaniards, adding 
much beside, and citing the phrase ^^hactenus 
inculta" in relation to Zwaanendael. The con- 
ference broke up with threats on both sides, and 
Utie, who had commanded as many as fifty men, 
fuming at the ambassadors. Waldron went 
home bearing messages to Stuyvesant from the 
Marylanders, and Herrman went to Accomack, 
after having sent to Stuyvesant, doubtless by 
Waldron, a letter recommending that a map be 
made in support of the Dutch claim to the Pen- 

122 



BOHEMIA MANOR 



insula lest ''Balthamoor" appeal to the British 
Parliament. What Stuyvesant answered to the 
offer to make a map expressing cartographi- 
cally the Dutch interpretation of the contested 
Latin phrase does not appear; but after 
Herrman returned to Maryland from Accomack, 
whither he had gone to persuade the Virginians 
that the Dutch had not incited the Indians to 
war, he seems to have decided that his personal 
interests were one with those of **Balthamoor," 
for on January 14, 1660, Maryland issued a 
decree of ''denization" to Herrman and his 
family. This decree did not grant naturaliza- 
tion, but conferred many privileges of citizen- 
ship, which, it declared, were by way of return 
for the making of a map by Herrman. Shortly 
afterward Herrman obtained a grant of Bohe- 
mia Manor in Cecil County of the Eastern Shore, 
and thus became a vassal of Lord Baltimore, a 
grant, as Herrman 's will declares, the reward 
for his feat of map making. On the surface 
what appears is tliis : Lord Baltimore needed a 
map, and Herrman seemed the man divinely 
appointed to serve his need; Herrman longed 
to be a territorial magnate, and the bargain was 
struck. Herrman now agreed to make a map 
expressing cartographically not the Dutch, 
but Calvert's interpretation of the phrase 

123 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

'^hactenus inculta/' as descriptive, not restric- 
tive. Calvert gave something like 20,000 acres 
to Herrman, with the hope that the map might 
help the Palatinate to retain some thousands 
of square miles. ^ 

October on the Eastern Shore is apt to be 
a month lovely, mild, mellow, and it was in 
October, 1659, that Herrman saw the region, 
possibly for the first time. Whoever knows 
Bohemia Manor, its broad lands, entrancing 
waters and rich forests, can understand how 
Herrman may have hankered after what lay 
beneath his eyes. The land was then in large 
part densely forested with mingled hardwood 
and pine — oak, beech, chestnut, hickory, walnut, 

^ Herrman's original grant, plus Middle Neck, of the 
same date, contained about 20,000 acres, bounded on the North 
by Back Creek, on the West by the Elk and Bohemia rivers, 
on the South by the Bohemia River and Great Bohemia Creek. 
The Eastern boundary was not clearly defined, but Herrman, 
wishing to own from bay to bay, obtained of the Calverts a 
grant of Augustine Manor, extending to the shore of Delaware 
Bay, though to this region he did not make good his claim. 
The Eastern boundary of Bohemia Manor may then be re- 
garded as coinciding with the Western line of Delaware. The 
Middle Neck grant, indicated as having 1000 acres "more 
or less," proved to have over 3000. It lies between Great 
Bohemia and Little Bohemia creeks. Joshua George bought 
Middle Neck from the third Lord of Bohemia Manor in 1726, 
and 1800 acres of the tract are still held by his descendants, 
heirs of Judge E. G. Bradford, the elder. Henry B. Bradford 
of Edge Moor is now building a dwelling on his part of the 
land, at a point commanding the streams. 

124 



BOHEMIA MANOR 



the several gums, and many flowering shrubs 
and trees, as the swamp magnolia, the shadblow, 
the Judas tree, in May and June rich with pink- 
ish-purple blossoms; and the gadding wild vine 
trailed over many a thicket in semi-tropic 
luxuriance. Rich, too, the region was in bird 
and beast, game great and small, in fish and 
oysters, crabs, clams and terrapin, — all the 
delicacies of the Chesapeake basin. 

The Bohemia River spreads to-day in serene 
beauty beneath the eyes of beholders upon the 
spot where Herrman built his manor house. 
The region is greatly beloved by those priv- 
ileged to make it their home.^ Wild geese, 
ducks, and swan so swarmed in those waters 
two-hundred-and-fif ty years ago that their cries 
kept strange visitors awake at night, and their 
rising clouds darkened the sun. This land, so 
rich in many things that Herrman must have 
loved, looked fair and restful to his keenly 
appraising eyes. He was now in middle life, 
and he must have suspected that New Amster- 
dam had little more to offer to such as he, that 
the Dutch would find it hard to enforce their 
claim against Lord Baltimore's charter, no 

* H. Rodney Sharp of Wilmington has an ample play- 
ground and a rough cabin on the Bohemia, and Stanley J. 
Fazer of Newark has a well appointed farm some miles below. 

lis 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

matter how impressive the map that he 
should make to bolster up such claim. After all, 
he was Bohemian, not Dutch, perhaps like 
Minuit, merely an able alien employed by the 
Dutch in their great colonial undertaking. He 
may have persuaded himself that his duty to 
Stuyvesant, and his ambassadorship ended with 
the end of his errand to Accomack. This bom 
inlander had been buffeted upon many seas, had 
known imprisonment, passed through bank- 
ruptcy, been a fugitive and subsequently for- 
given debtor. He had a wife and five children 
to provide for, and he knew by bitter experience 
that Stuyvesant could play the tyrant. No won- 
der that the new land, with its riches of sea and 
shore, its available trade routes, inland, domes- 
tic, foreign, charmed the adventurer seeking 
peace. The Chesapeake was ample Mediterra- 
nean for this later and lesser Ulysses of the New 
World, and the thought of a new personal 
dignity as a great feudal proprietor must have 
allured him after long service to others. There- 
after the Capes should be his Pillars of Hercules, 
which he might pass in safety should the old 
lust of adventure reawaken. 

It were better for Herrman's repute had he 
been unmistakably off with the old love before 
he was on with the new, had he stood by his 

126 



BOHEMIA MANOR 



Dutch employers. Nevertheless we lack the 
full story of his relations to the Dutch, and if 
the property in Manhattan which he mentioned 
long after in his will, really escaped sequestra- 
tion at the hands of Stuyvesant, the latter may 
not have taken a severe view of Herrman's 
conduct. At worst Herrman was a strong man 
under strong temptation. If he was to change 
masters, now was the time for the change. He 
had a sort of hold upon the Calverts in those 
words ^^hactenus inculta,^^ two of the costliest 
words ever written into a royal charter, each 
worth to William Penn, 1000 square miles, if 
we count only what he gained by the partition 
of the Peninsula, a partition that Herrman 
himself had suggested to Calvert and Fendall, 
as a way out of the quarrel with the Dutch. 

Lord Baltimore was slow to confer full 
citizenship upon his new vassal, demanding 
cautiously that Herrman ''do him right" in the 
matter of the map. It must have been roughly 
drawn almost immediately after Herrman's vain 
conference with Fendall, Calvert, and Utie, but 
it was not submitted in full form until Herrman 
had expended much time, labor and money in 
surveys and journeys. Finished '*in manu- 
script," it was sent to Lord Baltimore at 
London, in 1670, and pronounced by him the 

127 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 



best map ever made of any land. A more 
distingnished'person, and better judge of cartog- 
raphy, George Washington, long after pro- 
nounced it admirable, and it was slavishly 
copied by map makers up to the middle of the 
Eighteenth Century. The map was copyrighted 
to Herrman for fourteen years, and published 
in 1674, having been beautifully engraved upon 
copper by the highly skilled painter, engraver, 
and miniaturist, William Faithorne of London, 
though with some errors, of which Herrman 
complained. The engraver adorned the map 
with an escutcheon and other designs, most 
important of all a carefully executed miniature 
of Herrman, showing a fine cranium, a mass of 
dark hair falling in curls to the shoulders, prob- 
ably the wig of the period, often worn by men 
with naturally well thatched heads, an ener- 
getic, directive nose, a full and rather pleasure- 
loving chin, and a pair of imperious, wide-set 
dark eyes — ^indeed, a powerful and distin- 
guished countenance. 

Lord Baltimore gave orders that when the 
local authorities of the Palatinate were satisfied 
that Herrman had done Mm right in the matter 
of the map, they should issue the decree of 
naturalization for which he had frequently 
prayed. They must have found a relatively early 

128 



BOHEMIA MANOR 



form of the map satisfactory, for this decree 
was issued in 1666. John Fiske, the historian, 
himself a native of the Peninsula and much 
interested in Herrman's character and career, 
conjectures that tliis was the first instance of 
naturalization within the limits of the United 
States. Maryland's decree naturalizing Herrman 
and his large family may have hastened 
the Virginia statute of 1668, permitting the 
naturalization of aliens five years resident in 
the Old Dominion. 

During the fourteen years between the 
''denization" of Herrman, and the publication 
of his map, he must have been busy shaping his 
great estate of thirty-one-and-a-half square 
miles into the crude semblance of a European 
nobleman's feudal domain. He sent annually 
to Lord Baltimore' at London, three Indian 
arrowheads in token of fealty, and he exacted 
some feudal dues and perhaps tokens from his 
tenants.^ Whether the Lord of Bohemia Manor 
held courts-baron or his steward held courts-leet 
does not appear by the record, but some tenants 



•Feudality dies hard. The author about thirty years 
ago, crossing a field toward a new house that he was to occupy, 
found his hand suddenly seized and kissed by a kneeling 
Italian in search of work, who thus went through a form of 
feudal "homage." 



129 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

of Lord Baltimore did exercise such judicial 
powers, called by a famous writer on tenures 
the very heart of feudality. Certainly Herrman 
maintained in that wild country, where he was 
the greatest local landlord, somewhat the port 
and pretentions of a feudal grandee, a nobleman 
of the Palatinate, though Lord Baltimore 
granted him no patent of nobility. Herrman 
was busy also in trade. Ships he had that came 
up the shallows of the Bohemia to his wharves, 
doubtless for tobacco, the staple of the time, 
though Herrman, with commendable foresight, 
experimented with other crops, among them 
indigo. He anticipated in his dreams the Ches- 
apeake and Delaware Canal, but unable to put 
through so great a work, he connected the head 
of navigation on the Appoquinimink, a tribu- 
tary of Delaware Bay, with the head of 
navigation on a branch of the Bohemia, by a 
cart road through the woods, usually spoken of 
as a rough highway, though he had what the 
Labadist missionaries called a broad cart road 
of twenty-two miles to Augustine Manor, and 
New Castle gave him aid in building the 
trans-Peninsula connection. The highway of 
Herrman 's trade route between the bays is 
remembered probably by some very old persons 

130 



BOHEMIA MANOR 



still living, as ' ' The Old Man 's Path. ' ' In truth, 
Herrman was the grand old man of those parts, 
a local power, a citizen of the great world with 
vision, energy, and seemingly more than mere 
glimmerings of social responsibility. He had, 
it is true, the poor vanity of founding a feudal 
line, but that was ambition natural enough for 
a Central European born in the very edge of 
the Seventeenth Century, when as yet much of 
Europe was within the penumbra of dying 
feudalism. The passion for land-holding has 
never died out on the Eastern Shore, and it 
still lives in that fine agricultural country of 
Delaware edging Bohemia Manor. There are 
Delawareans whose holdings extend from New 
Castle county into the lands of the manor itself. 
There are picturesque traditions of Herr- 
man 's character and conduct. One represents 
that he incautiously put himself into the power 
of the Dutch at Manhattan after becoming a 
vassal of Lord Baltimore, and was imprisoned. 
Affecting madness, he induced his jailors to 
imprison with him, his favorite horse. In the 
middle of the night he spurred the animal at 
a door fifteen feet above ground, alighted in 
safety, swam the horse across the North River, 
rode him for days until they reached the Dela- 

131 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

ware, swam Mm across that river, and even- 
tually reached the manor house on the back of 
the much enduring beast, though some say the 
horse died after swimming the Delaware. 
Another and more probable version of the 
incident tells that Herrman, imprisoned in a 
fort, and displaying his horsmanship to his 
captors, rode out by way of an embrasure, 
from which the cannon had been removed, and 
reached neutral territory before the Dutch pur- 
suers could overtake him in his flight. A 
picture in oils, which Herrman caused to be 
made of himself and his horse, is said to com- 
memorate this escape. 

Herrman built a manor house, and hard by 
impaled a deer park. The ruinous foundations 
of the latter are still shown. Here Herrman 
kept open house, after the fashion of planters 
as described in that pamphlet of disillusion- 
ment, "The Sot Weed Factor." In that ample 
manor house, *' it snowed of meat and drink." 
There was rich if perhaps rude abundance of 
good things from land and water, and the 
liquors that livened the feast were of the best, 
domestic and foreign. Hearth fires blazed and 
roared, fed by the hardwood forests of the 
manor, and tended by negro slaves. Herrman 

132 



BOHEMIA MANOR 



probably drew a considerable income from the 
tolls of his trade route across the Peninsula, 
perhaps excited the jealousy of New Castle in 
its character as a port of transfer, which it had 
acquired many years before the coming of this 
energetic feudal lord, as it was to have again 
long after his trade route had fallen into decay. 
Late in life Herrman abdicated in favor of 
his son, Ephraim George. The terms of abdica- 
tion hint eloquently of the life led by the first 
Lord of Bohemia Manor. The new lord was to 
pay the old yearly five-thousand pounds of mer- 
chantable tobacco with casks, six barrels of 
''good beer and strong beer," an anker of rum, 
two ankers, or twenty gallons of "good wine" 
(surely a moderate allowance), one hogshead of 
the best cider out of the orchard, and one hun- 
dred weight of Muscovado sugar, "for my pri- 
vate spending." Perhaps the sugar was to mix 
with the rum, mitigated with water, or to go 
with the cider into bottles, plus a quantum suf. 
of raisins, but observe that this conjecture is 
a mere obiter dictum, not to be accepted as a 
recipe within the meaning of the Volstead Act, 
or any amendment thereunto. Furthermore, 
should the retiring lord of the manor remove 
from the home, the son was to pay annually an 

133 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 



additional two-thousand pounds of tobacco "to- 
ward my board. ' ' And finally, * ' should I happen 
to go to New York, ' ' there was to be furnished 
by the son twenty-five pounds in money, equiv- 
alent to-day to something like $1,000. Thus early 
did decent country folk find New York a costly 
pleasure place. 

Herrman's old age (he died in 1686) was 
troubled, according to the Labadist mission- 
aries, by a shrewish wife, a person not men- 
tioned by other chroniclers, who drove his 
children from home, but Labadist testimony is to 
be taken with caution, and the absence of the 
children can be con jectur ally explained upon 
other grounds. Besides, the lady of the manor, 
whoever she may have been, probably scented 
danger in the coming of the missionaries, and 
treated them coldly. As like as not the domestic 
arrangements at Bohemia Manor furnished 
problems such as Herrman liimself failed to 
realize, preoccupied as he was with his large 
doings and his larger imaginings. Managing 
that great household was probably no task to 
sweeten a woman's temper. 

There were six successors to Herrman in 
the lordship of Bohemia Manor, though the 
property dwindled in the course of generations, 

134 



BOHEMIA MANOR 



and ** lords"* the later heirs could hardly be 
called. At the death of the fifth lord, the title 
and estate passed to the female line. The sixth 
lord, named Ensor, and acknowledged in child- 
hood as heir to title and estate, took in 
accordance with Herrman's testamentary 
requirement the prenomen, "Augustine Plerr- 
man," but died by a fall from his horse in 1782, 
when celebrating with other youths his coming 
of age. The seventh and last owner of Bohemia 
manor was a feeble-minded creature, who used 
to draw a circle about himself as he stood upon 
his own land, and defy all comers. His death 
early in the last century ended in childish pride 
and weakness, a feudal line that began in the 
manly pride and strength of ''Augustine Herr- 
man, Bohemian," except William Claiborne of 
Kent Island, the most notable colonial magnate 
of Maryland 's Eastern Shore. 

* Although the charter of the Calverta empowered them 
to set up a titled aristocracy they did not create what may 
be strictly called an order of nobility. Wisdom, if not per- 
sonal conviction, led them to give their Palatinate a somewhat 
democratic character. That extraordinary woman, Margaret 
Brent, who as attorney for the Calverts claimed the right 
to sit in the Assembly, held courts baron at her Manor of 
St. Gabriels. In the Assembly skilled mechanics sat side by 
side with the land-owning gentry. Indeed skilled mechanics 
were so prized in early Maryland that a blacksmith convicted 
of murder was spared the death penalty, and merely con- 
demned to be public hangman, as if it was hoped that he 
might thus lawfully sate his thirst for homicide. Unfor- 
tunately he was found later doing a little murder on his own 
personal account and sent to the gallows. 

135 



CHAPTER IX 
MASON AND DIXON'S LINE 

ACCIDENT, climate, industrial development, 
.the Quaker conscience, made Mason and 
Dixon's Line, originally agreed upon as defining 
the mutual limits of the colonial empires ruled 
by the Penns and the Calverts, the most signif- 
icant boundary in the interior geography 
of the United States. Nevertheless, should 
some such querist as Mr. Edison suddenly ask, 
' ' Where and what is Mason and Dixon 's Line 1 ' ', 
nine intelligent persons out of ten would be 
puzzled to answer in detail, and the tenth would 
probably have but a vague notion of the curious 
history relating to this much debated boundary. 
The 'initial monument" of Mason and Dixon's 
Line, as officially located and set, almost thirty 
years ago, oddly enough stands at the intersec- 
tion of ''Mason and Dixon's Line extended" 
with the Northern arc of Delaware. As thus 
officially determined, Mason and Dixon's Line is 
the boundary between Pennsylvania on the 
North and Maryland, together with half a mile 
of Delaware, on the South. In spite of this 

136 



^ 






A.t.lt*l. 






; im. M • !»*«■ 



s•^ 




DELAWARE S BIRTH STONE 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE 



''monument," however, residents on either 
side of the boundary between Maryland and 
Delaware commonly speak of it as part of Mason 
and Dixon's Line. 

In the days when English kings gave away 
with careless royal magnificence American 
empires far larger than the British Isles, the 
head of the Calvert family, a Yorkshireman of 
Flemish origin, became proprietor, or ''proprie- 
tary," as the technical term was, of the region 
called Maryland, in honor of the English 
Queen. When William Pemi, half a century 
later, won his noble domain of Pennsylvania, 
to which was added what we now call Delaware, 
he of all men, inherited the ancient quarrel of 
the Calverts and the Dutch over the ownership 
of the Peninsula above the Virginia line. Penn 
fought, not with pike and gun, but with subtler 
weapons, though Catholic Marylanders and 
stern Cromwellians warred within his territory 
with the rival cries, "Hey, for St. Mary's," and 
' ' In the name of God, fall on ! " Quaker William, 
although Protestant and Commoner, never- 
theless had more influence at court through his 
Catholic royal friend James Duke of York, 
than the noble and Catholic Calverts, and the 
revolution that placed the Protestant WilUam 

137 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

and Mary on the throne made the plight of the 
Calverts still worse. 

When the narrow coastal strip now called 
Delaware was marked off from Pennsylvania 
by the arc familiar to all who know the map of 
the United States, nobody knew precisely how 
much territory was included in the region below 
this circular boundary, and it was even uncer- 
tain as to where lay the Fortieth Parallel, 
designated as the line between the Penns and 
the Calverts. Penn seems to have believed that 
he had placed his capital above that line, though 
all men now know better — that he placed Phila- 
delphia in Maryland. The Northern arc of 
Delaware was ascertained by drawing a circle 
of twelve miles radius from the Court House at 
New Castle as a centre, though as a matter of 
fact the surveyors of 1701 took a radius slightly 
longer than twelve miles.^ Although Penn 
claimed the whole Peninsula above the Virginia 
line, he coveted chiefly a coastal strip South- 
ward to the ocean, and wished, of course, to 
secure permanently the site of his capital. He 
was far less concerned for the hinterland West- 
ward from Delaware River and Bay. Neverthe- 
less, he enforced his general claim by quoting 
against the Calverts the words from their own 

*The radius was 108 feet too long. 

138 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE 



patent, ''hactenus inculta," unpleasantly famil- 
iar to the Proprietor of Maryland, from the 
days of William Claiborne, and again, from the 
time when Augustine Herrman was spokesman 
for the Dutch of Manhattan. By the time bland 
William spoke, ^'hactenus inculta^^ must have 
been as hateful to the Calverts as *' security" in 
the ears of Falstaff. 

After litigation covering nearly three-quar- 
ters of a century, the British Lord Chancellor 
rendered a Solomon's judgment dividing the 
child in dispute. In other words, he granted the 
Penns their outlet to the Atlantic, together with 
a handsome slice of the hinterland, and the 
Calverts lost not only nearly half the Peninsula, 
but a long strip on the North, so that Penn's 
capital should be undisturbed. 

The terms of the Lord Chancellor's decision 
were oddly complex. Simply stated, they 
required that a line from the Atlantic well 
below the mouth of Delaware Bay, Westward 
to the Chesapeake, should be bisected, and that 
from the point of bisection a line should be so 
erected as to form a tangent to the twelve mile 
circle centred at New Castle. The tangent is 
not a true North line. It was further provided 
that from the tangential point a true North line 
should be drawn to a point fifteen miles South 

139 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

of the most Southerly part of Philadelpliia, so 
that Perm's capital should be well within his 
own territory. Furthermore, from the upper 
end of the true North line there should he 
drawn due Westward a line to extend as far as 
the possessions of the two proprietors were 
conterminous. It was minutely stipulated that 
should the true North line prove a secant to the 
circle, the part thus cut off should belong to 
New Castle county, with the result that to-day 
that county has a wart of territory taken out 
of what would naturally belong to Cecil county, 
Maryland, so tiny a scrap, indeed, that it could 
not be indicated save upon a map of huge size. 
Over this decision, rendered in 1750, the Penns 
and the Calverts higgled like retailer and cus- 
tomer for ten years, each eager to get the better 
of the other by any shameful trick of interpreta- 
tion. In the end the Calverts gave up their 
extreme demand, and the land-hungry proprie- 
tors reached an agreement for the survey of 
the boundaries. 

Local surveyors began the work in 1760, and 
by 1763 had fixed the Southern line and de- 
termined the tangential point. Then Lord 
Baltimore, impatient at the slowness of the 
American surveyors, proposed that Londoners 
be sent over to finish the task, and by agreement 

140 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE 



between the two parties in interest Charles 
Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, well reputed sur- 
veyors of London, one of them a skilled astron- 
omer, were employed. They brought the best 
instruments of the time, built in Philadelphia 
what is thought to have been the first American 
astronomical observatory, verified the Southern 
and Western boundary of Delaware, and 
declared the tangential point so closely ascer- 
tained that they could not shift it an inch from 
the site fixed by their predecessors. The latter 
had used the simple instruments then commonly 
used by American surveyors. It must be 
remembered that the youthful George Washing- 
ton had begun his career as surveyor only 
fifteen years before this time, and that American 
surveyors were then much in demand, well paid, 
and highly considered. Indeed, they gave the 
profession a digTiity that it has never lost.^ 

It took the English surveyors until 1767 to 
advance their work through the wilderness and 
across the mountains to a point 244 miles 
Westward from the Northeast corner of 
Maryland, when their strong Indian escort 
said in plain words that the survey must stop. 
There Mason and Dixon and their large corps 



*An ancestor of the Pennsylvania Pennypackers was a 
surveyor for the Penns. 

141 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

of assistants placed a cairn, and long afterward 
the survey was finished by other hands. 
According to the legend at Newark, Delaware, 
Mason and Dixon were stationed for some weeks 
at St. Patrick's Tavern, on the present site of 
the Deer Park Hotel in that town, and gossips 
of the day reported that the corps consumed 
prodigious quantities of good liquor; but that 
tale may well have been mere scandal spread 
by the envious of unslaked thirst. Stones of 
hardest oolite, imported from England, and 
every fifth stone marked with the arms of the 
Penns and the Calverts on opposite sides, were 
set along the line. One of the arms-bearing 
stones was found some years ago under a porch 
pillar of a colonial house at Newark. Could 
the liquor of St. Patrick's Tavern have betrayed 
some stone-setter into this error? 

All concerned in the surveys, whether native 
or imported, drunk or sober, made mistakes, 
some of them due to defective instruments, 
some to erroneous geographical and astronom- 
ical notions shared by the scientific world of 
that time. The arc between Pennsylvania and 
Delaware, which it is pretty certain that Mason 
and Dixon did not survey, except in so far as 
to ascertain the tiny wart cut off by the secant 
North line, was wrongly drawn, and not prop- 

142 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE 



erly marked until nearly a century later. 
Mason and Dixon's Line was placed about 404 
feet too far South, so that Maryland lost nearly 
10,000 acres to Pennsylvania, and a wedge- 
shaped bit 100 feet wide at the North, and 
eighty miles long was wrongly surveyed from 
Maryland into Delaware. 

Finally, for nearly two hundred years a tiny 
triangle called **The Flat Iron" was shown on 
all maps, as it is still on many, as part of Penn- 
sylvania, although Delaware exercised jurisdic- 
tion over it after a lax fashion. Mason and 
Dixon's survey assigned this triangle to 
Pennsylvania as a sharp little tongue thrust 
between the arc on the East and Maryland on 
the West. Nevertheless, William Smith, resi- 
dent in the triangle, sat in the Delaware 
Legislature, where he was addressed as **the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania." Duels and 
prize-fights took place in the debatable land, 
and Pennsylvania vainly tried to assert juris- 
diction over its inhabitants, but they kept on 
voting and paying taxes in Delaware, and were 
seemingly of all Delawareans the most uncom- 
promising. In 1849, United States engineers 
surveyed part of the arc and reset some missing 
stones, in doing which they again assigned the 
triangle to Pennsylvania, though with no effect 

143 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

except to make the residents more than ever 
Delawarean in allegiance. A quarter of a cen- 
tury ago Pennsylvania, wearied of petty strife, 
formally ceded the triangle to Delaware, but 
Delaware took no official notice of the cession, 
except to say metaphorically, with thumb at nose 
and four fingers in rapid f aiming motion : * * You 
be blowed. It was always ours ! ' '^ 

Not yet ended was the little war started 
nearly three hundred years ago by the phrase 
^^hactenus inculta,^' for a new commission, 
appointed by the Federal Government, under- 
took to establish, about thirty years ago, the 
initial stone of Mason and Dixon's Line, and 
the Northern arc of Delaware. A corps of 
United States engineers under Captain W. C. 
Hodgkins of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, 
gave many months of minutely careful work to 
the undertaking, with the commission as author- 
ity. The engineers found so many errors in 
the arc that they determined, in order to disturb 
civil relations as little as possible, to make the 

' When, as noted in the text, Mason and Dixon's Line 
was prolonged in 1893 about half a mile Eastward to the 
Delaware arc and the initial monument of the line was placed 
at the point of intersection, the disputed triangle was thus 
assigned to Delaware, and it has not since been debatable 
territory. For minutely accurate details in this chapter 
the author is indebted to his life-long friend, Wilbur T. 
Wilson of Newark. 

144 



MASON AND DIXON'S LINE 



boundary from the arcs of two circles, but the 
effect of their well meant caution was to outrage 
residents on one side and the other, men whose 
ancestors for generations had been Delawareans 
or Pennsylvanians, and who now found them- 
selves surveyed out of the ancestral jurisdiction. 
John Johnston, of peaceable Quaker stock, was 
surveyed into Pennsylvania, but he rode to the 
polls in Delaware swathed in the Stars-and- 
Stripes, demanding to vote, and he steadily 
declined to pay taxes to Pennsylvania, so that 
his stock was seized for his delinquency, though 
the courts of that state, to which he appealed, 
found cause to decide in his favor. Meanwhile, 
William Smith, son of ''the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania," having long continued his 
father's fight for the priceless privilege of being 
a Delawarean, alarmed perhaps for his civil 
status, removed to Newark, well within the 
beloved state, but with human inconsistency, 
removed once more, this time to Philadelphia, 
where he died a citizen of the jurisdiction he 
had spent a lifetime in rejecting and contemning. 
The comedy of Mason and Dixon's Line, and the 
disputed circular boundary seemingly ended 
about two years ago, when it was determined 
that the last survey was of none effect, because 
one member of the commission was constitu- 

10 145 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

tioiially incapable of holding the office ; but the 
findings of the United States Engineers were 
at last accepted by both legislatures in 1921, so 
that the work of the unconstitutionally consti- 
tuted commission became effective. The cost 
of commissions and surveys would have bought 
the whole triangle several times over. 



CHAPTER X 
AN OLD MARYLAND PLANTATION 



IN strong contrast with the feudal display of 
Bohemia Manor in the Seventeenth and 
Eighteenth Centuries, and such homesteads as 
Beverly and its neighbors beyond the Virginia 
line in Accomack, was the far smaller planta- 
tion of Major Joshua Prideaux, in Worcester 
county. A portrait of the Major in oils, done 
no doubt, by a travelling artist, now occupies, 
perhaps without strictly adorning, the chimney 
breast of his great-grandson's study. The 
painter pictured him as a ruddy gentleman of 
possibly three score, in blue, brass-buttoned 
coat, with high-rolled collar. His white waist- 
coat is cut low, and the shirt bosom hidden by 
a flowing tie. Born in 1767, he must have been 
at his death, a trifle over three-score and ten 
years later, a curious blend of the two centuries 
that had shared his life. According to tradition, 
his immigrant Huguenot ancestor came ashore 
from a wrecked ship on a hencoop, fetching 
with him, it may be guessed, little of this world's 
goods. This nautical adventure happened 

147 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

probably three generations before the Major's 
birth. Whether or not a wife shared the immi- 
grant's frail raft is not known, but his descend- 
ants lost no time in mingling their French 
blood with that of neighbors sprung from 
British stock — Atkinsons, Ratcliffes, Purnells, 
Spences, Arbuckles. Not yet, however, have the 
Gallic traits altogether vanished from the 
Major's descendants. Major Prideaux's title 
may have been won in the war of 1812, but it 
was more probably an honor that went with his 
membership in the Governor's Council. His 
maiden daughter Sarah, born in 1797, to the 
day of her death, almost seventy years later, 
was accustomed to shake her head significantly 
as she murmured, "Great Britain would like 
to have us again, ' ' She was a mine of memories, 
and from her prattle of vanished days can be 
constructed a fairly faithful picture of planta- 
tion life in Worcester, during the first four 
decades of the Nineteenth Century. 

Sarah Prideaux and her sister Euphemia, 
wove silken bolting cloths for the Major's grist 
mill, cut and made the clothing of his slaves, 
and looked to the thousand and one details of 
an essentially self-sustaining plantation. As 
for the Major, the ''home place" was only one 
of his many preoccupations. He not only grew 

148 



AN OLD MARYLAND PLANTATION 

crops, and managed the mill, jbut kept or at 
least owned a country store, where he sold 
whiskey by the gallon. He also hauled seine at 
night by the smoky glare of fat pine torches, 
and to the wailful music of the slaves, knee- 
deep in the salt shallows, built ships, and sailed 
them as far as New York, bred Muscovy ducks 
and fancy cattle, and had his share in the local 
administration of church and state. 

Although the immediate family was not 
large, the plantation house must often have been 
crowded, in spite of an ample kitchen some yards 
away, connected with the diningroom by the 
** corridor," for there were many casual guests, 
some of them self-invited, along with perma- 
nent dependents and other persons. Tho 
abundance of the Major's table was a matter 
of public knowledge, and ''Let's go to Major 
Prideaux's" was a suggestion frequent toward 
the noon hour, with young men driving far from 
home. A shoemaker came annually and made 
or mended the shoes of free and slave. Doubt- 
less the leather was tanned from the skins of 
the Major's calves, and water-tight boots were 
wrought from the skins of porpoises caught in 
the nets. A weatherwise cousin, famed for tel- 
ling the time by a glance at the starry heavens, 
always had her shoes made a year before she 

149 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

expected to use them, having no fancy for 
walking while her shoes were green. Sarah 
Prideaux always complained half humorously 
that she and Euphemia had to sit in the cold of 
winter days and nights, while the Major and 
his cronies roared over old stories in front of 
the roaring hearth. Walter Scott so charmed 
the Major that he named some of his slaves for 
Scott's fictional characters: he had a Gurth, a 
Wamba, a Rebecca, and even a dusky Rowena. 
Perhaps some of these names are still worn by 
the descendants of the original wearers. 

Major Prideaux was not a hard taskmaster, 
though like other slaveholders, he sometimes 
hired out his human chattels, and took coin for 
their sweat. The slave household gathered 
nightly in the livingroom at family prayers, 
occasions that must have brought an odd touch 
of Christian fellowship between master and 
slave, for Sarah Prideaux recalled the comment 
of one black listener to the Scriptures, who 
exclaimed with unction, "Moses, pea's like he 
was de Lo'd's right-han'man!" When Major 
Prideaux returned of winter dusk with his 
slave oarsmen across the six or seven miles 
of Sinepuxent Bay, after boiling salt on the 
sandy peninsula of Assateague with the roar 
of the Atlantic in his ears, he had to stride up 

150 



AN OLD MARYLAND PLANTATION 

and down the boat, whip in hand, to wake any 
oarsman who seemed likely to freeze in his 
sleep. The salt thus made went to cure the 
Major's ham and bacon, his thousands of her- 
ring and other fish barreled for winter use, his 
dried and smoked beef, and whatever else was 
stored for the feeding of house and ** quarters." 
Doubtless some of the salted products, as some 
of the salt itself, he sold at the store. 

Life at the plantation, was perhaps, not 
intellectually stimulating. There was the 
drive to church, and no doubt now and then a 
ministerial guest, almost certainly ''Bishop" 
McMaster from Eehoboth, a scholarly man. A 
neighbor and kinsman was Judge Robins. 
Sarah Prideaux recalled the large nursery for 
the first heir to the Judge's entailed estate, 
with the little house within it, where presided 
a portentous black "mammy." There was a 
stir of excitement indoors whenever a "haloo" 
came at night from across the creek. A slave 
oarsman put out in answer to the call, and the 
friend or neighbor, or mere stranger was hos- 
pitably entertained, and sent on his way next 
morning. Chance visitors dropped in for the 
midday dinner or the ample evening supper with 
its waffles, or comcakes, muffins or sally lunn, 
its fried oysters fresh from the neighboring bay, 

151 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

its sliced cured tongue, and its varied sweets. 
There must have been books, of course, else 
there could have been no black Gurth or Wamba, 
and besides, there survives ''Sally Prideaux's 
Book of Poetry," with copies of verses in a 
neat, stiff girlish hand. 

There was genuine excitement when the 
Major returned in his own ship from New York, 
fetching no doubt exotic finery for the daughters, 
and on one occasion the oft-told tale of the lady 
whom the Major saw carelessly trailing her 
trained skirt down the outside stairway, prob- 
ably somewhere in the region of the Battery. 
The tale must have called from the Major's 
cronies in front of the winter hearth cynic com- 
ment upon the follies of fashion. One of Sarah 
Prideaux's delightful memories concerned her 
drive of nearly 200 miles in the Major's gig 
from Worcester county to Philadelphia. The 
journey was agreeably broken by stops at the 
homes of hospitable friends, once at the home 
of the Whiteleys near Newark, doubtless the 
fine old house of stone and brick near the later 
and more magnificent mansion now the Home 
of the Red Men. That infant red Philadelphia 
of Sarah Prideaux's visit, well over a century 
ago, when as yet all vehicles were horse-drawn, 
must have had barely 50,000 inhabitants, but 

152 



AN OLD MARYLAND PLANTATION 

it was the largest city she had ever seen, and her 
young black eyes took permanent note of much 
that they saw, her keen girlish ears retained 
for the rest of life the cry of the negro street 
vendors, ''Pepper pot, piping hot, got chicken 
in it, too." That characteristic thick soup of 
more than a century ago is still made with high 
art in Philadelphia. 

Although Major Prideaux was said to have 
married two fortunes, and seems to have busied 
himself in many occupations, he did not die rich. 
His open hospitality, and his habit of exchang- 
ing well-bred stock for his neighbors' beasts of 
poorer quality helped to eat up his gains. The 
face in the surviving portrait is not that of a 
money-maker keen at a bargain and avid in 
saving. It was recalled that he found amuse- 
ment on what proved his deathbed by the gam- 
bols of kittens romping over the counterpane. 

When the end came for the Major in 1839, 
the keen Euphemia soon took her share of the 
slaves and went off to far Missouri, then less 
than ten years a state of the Union. She took 
also the Prideaux silver ladle, long mourned by 
Sarah as a lost heirloom. It could hardly have 
come ashore with the half -drowned immigrant on 
his hencoop, and must have been acquired by 
purchase, or perhaps by inheritance from one 

153 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

of the luclder families into which the Prideaux 
married. Euphemia married, was divorced 
and died a very old woman in Missouri, leaving 
all her worldly goods, and perhaps the silver 
ladle, to those who had been her slaves, an 
act of tardy and inadequate justice which her 
natural heirs in Delaware and Maryland were 
fain to acknowledge as such. 

Sarah had died ten or a dozen years before 
Euphemia. Age and frail health staid not her 
bright knitting needles, jealously stored in 
their bamboo case. As she knitted, her tongue 
ran on ceaselessly with tale and tradition of 
the Eastern Shore. Her voice sank to a whis- 
per as she told of the Tories and their ' * Black 
Camp," a reminiscence of Revolutionary days 
given her by the Major. Lower still was the 
mysterious voice in which she told of the ghost 
that appeared to announce the coming of death 
in the family of her Spence kinsmen. ** It 
appeared for your great-grandfather," she 
would say to the listening lad. **As your grand- 
father walked home through the woods one 
evening in winter, he saw a woman in white 
coming toward him, but when he had made a 
turn in the road, where she had crossed it, she 
was gone. And didn't Cousin Mary Fountain 

154 



AN OLD MARYLAND PLANTATION 



see her, only last year, a woman with a white 
handkerchief wimpled about her head, just be- 
fore your uncle Ara died down on Sinepuxent 
Bay!" No wonder the little boy, sleeping in a 
trundle bed at the foot of his mother's, woke her 
with a cry in the night as he saw a tall woman 
in white gown turning as in sorrow from the 
child where he lay. 

That slender, erect figure of Sarah Prideaux, 
with the wrinkled ivory old French face, framed 
in white frilled cap, and accentuated by the 
still undimmed black eyes, moved about the house 
like a ghostly presence from an earlier century. 
It seemed that her slight strength might wear 
even until the Twentieth Century itself dawned ; 
but there came a night when her hickory ''bed- 
fellow," heated in the kitchen oven, failed to 
warm the weary limbs, and there came a morn- 
ing when she woke not in her shuttered room. 
For three days the house was darkened, and 
the faithful listener to her prattle found him- 
self smitten sore of conscience that he whiled 
away that terrible period by reading, yea and 
enjoying, the ''St. Elmp" of Miss Evans, half 
forgetful of the still and waxen face in the silent 
darkened chamber overhead. Sarah Prideaux 
was laid not in the hospitable sand of her 

155 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

beloved Eastern Shore beside the ancestors 
whose graves on the home plantation had passed 
to alien owners, but in the cold clay of North- 
ern Delaware. Her last will and testament 
contained this provision in favor of him who 
had sought forgetfulness in the gorgeous 
romance of Miss Evans: '*To my beloved 
nephew, $100, as a mark of affection. ' ' 



CHAPTER XI 
WILMINGTON 



WILMINGTON, is the one considerable 
city of the Peninsula, and of the larger 
Atlantic coast cities, only New York and Boston 
are older. It is nearly a half -century older 
than Philadelphia, nearly a century older than 
Baltimore. At Wilmington have ruled in suc- 
cession Swedes, Dutch, English, and at length 
Americans freed of the mother country's hold. 
The Swedes of 1638, acting apparently upon 
the principle of ''safety first," sailed their 
little ships, the Griffin and the Key of Kalmar, 
up the crooked, shoal-beset Christiana to a 
rocky shore edging deep water, "The Eocks."^ 
When the Swedish village on the Christiana 
was little more than a fort and a handful of tin3 
houses, the Dutch enforced in almost bloodless 
battle their claim to the region. Swedish power 
in the New World thus perished when it was 
I'jss than a score of years in possession. Dutch 
power perished in less than half a score, when 
it gave way to the English in 1664, after the act 
of something like treachery that made them 

157 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 



lords of Manhattan. Swedish Wilmington never 
bore its present name, and, indeed, the village 
first called Willingstown in honor of its founder, 
and later Wilmington for the English earl of 
that title, was laid out on the Christiana, half a 
mile from ' ' The Rocks ' ' ^ and nearly a century 
after' the coming of the Swedes. Swedish speech 
and custom long outlived both "conquests." 
Wilmington was still a mere hamlet when in 
1735 William Shipley, an educated and wealthy 
Quaker of Philadelphia, settled in the place, 
led thither, it is said, by his vision-seeing wife, 
the Quakeress preacher, Elizabeth Lewis. 
William Shipley's house, a hip-roofed, four- 
story brick structure with corniced gable, still 
stood at the South-west corner of Shipley and 
Fourth Streets within the memory of many liv- 
ing men. His presence was so stimulating that 
the hamlet grew in four years into a village of 
600 inhabitants. Next year it was chartered by 
the Penns under its present name. A block East 
of the Shipley dwelling William built at the cor- 
ner of Market and Fourth Streets a new market 
house, rival to the older one two blocks below. 
The burgesses met for years at taverns, where 

' Patriotic women have marked the spot with an engraved 
stone made from part of the actual rock upon which the 
Swedes landed. 

158 



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CO 

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WILMINGTON 



no doubt their dry deliberations were suitably 
moistened, but later a Town Hall was built 
on arches over one end of the Second Street 
market house. Wilmington outgrew that Town 
Hall and its successor, which still stands with 
a sort of gaunt distinction, and the city fathers 
now share a beautiful new marble palace with 
the courts and the county authorities. 

Eighteenth Century Wilmington had its 
fairs, to which town folk and country folk came 
in their best to dance to the music of the fiddle, 
flute, bagpipe and trombone. Under Quaker 
influence Wilmington was growing into a sort 
of tiny red-brick Philadelphia, with neat little, 
houses, scrupulously swept door-steps, shaded 
streets, and green rear gardens. Quaker influ- 
ence, or some other of like austerity, brought 
about abolition of the fairs by act of Legis- 
lature in 1785 as nurseries of vice and a 
scandal to virtue. Such fairs were common in 
the larger villages all over the Peninsula. Along 
with the Quaker severity and seemly order 
there went a touch of old fashioned British 
belligerence, for bullies fought bare to the 
waist in the market place, and hired ruffians 
hacked down the posts of William Shipley's 
market house. Farmers were soon driving 
many miles over vile roads to sell their produce 

159 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

' ^ 

in the King Street open-air market, and the 
town authorities had to pass a severe law 
against folk who profiteered by the obvious 
means of buying up the day's load of many 
farmers' wagons and advancing prices. The 
open-air market survives, and townsfolk now 
complain that farmers have learned a trick 
worth two of that. 

Washington visited Wilmington on the eve 
of misfortune at the Battle of the Brandywine, 
and later when no ill luck threatened. During 
his '* progress" as President in 1791, he left 
his chariot of state in little stone-built Brandy- 
wine Village, since absorbed by Wilmington, 
and strode through the cobbled main street to 
Joseph Tatnall's mill, that he might thank the 
patriot Quaker for his services in grinding 
grist for the army. Almost a century later 
there died at Wilmington an inconspicuous old 
lady of the Washington blood, whose likeness 
to the great man was noted by all who saw her 
face in its cold repose. 

The little red town that came through the 
Revolutionary War had, mingled with the sober 
drab of its predominant Quaker society, the 
gaiety of a French element, some part of it left 
over, perhaps, from LaFayette's companions 
in arms, who remained in the land they had 

160 



WILMINGTON 



helped to free. There came also French refu- 
gees froni the black-and-red terror of revolu- 
tionized Haiti, and there were also a few 
descendants of French Huguenot refugees, 
some generations Americanized, but showing 
still the Gallic vivacity and taste, the facial 
marks, especially about the eyes, so persistent 
in that great racial strain. The most conspicu- 
ous Delaware family of French name in these 
days, the Du Fonts, found permanent home at 
Wilmington in the very edge of the Nineteenth 
Century, but they have amazingly multiplied 
in numbers and in wealth, and their best known, 
but not normally most important product, has 
become so world-famous, that timid strangers, 
it may be guessed, tread softly in the streets of 
Wilmington, lest unawares they set oif some 
deadly petard. 

Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, as 
member of the French States General of 1789, 
took the addition to his name, not because he 
was of a territorial noble family, but because 
he was sent from Nemours, and wished to 
distinguish himself from many other Du Ponts 
in that body. Possibly, as an emancipated lib- 
eral, he took the addition with intent to mark 
his contempt for aristocratic pretence. He was 
a man of the robe, not of the sword, nobly distin- 

11 161 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

guished as isavant, author, statesman, philanthro- 
pist. He came to the United States in 1799, but 
returned to France, where he helped to arrange 
the transfer of Louisiana to the United States, 
and at Napoleon's wish drew up a plan of 
public education, the basis of the French system 
as it is to-day. This plan, was a modification of 
a like comprehensive scheme drawn up by Du 
Pont for the United States at the request of 
Thomas Jefferson, though never put into 
effect. The whole thing may be found in a rare 
French book preserved in the Wilmington Pub- 
lic Library. Pierre Samuel Du Pont of to-day 
comes honestly by his interest in public 
education. 

Wilmington of the late Eighteenth and the 
early Nineteenth Century had its families of 
moderate wealth, and its own touch of provin- 
cial culture and fashion, the beginning of its 
definite leadersliip in such matters. Robert 
Montgomery made the tour of Europe, like any 
English young gentleman, and during four 
months of the yellow fever epidemic in Phila- 
delphia entertained Governor McKean of Penn- 
sylvania. Another wealthy Wilmingtonian is 
said to have entertained for a time one hundred 
refugees from the plague-stricken greater 
neighbor. Gunning Bedford, first Federal Dis- 

162 



WILMINGTON 



trict Judge in these parts, aide-de-camp and 
friend of Washington, to whom the Pater Pat- 
riae let a crimson Masonic sash, entertained 
distinguished strangers and his fellow townsmen 
at his large house in Market Street, once the 
headquarters of Washington's French officers. 
Local leadership at Wilmington has often ex- 
pressed itself not merely in hospitality such as 
that of yellow fever days, and in social display 
of luxury, but in a fine public spirit such as 
was shown by Joseph Bancroft, to whom the city 
owes its rarely beautiful, unspoiled natural 
wooded park. 

Ten years hence Wilmington will celebrate 
the completion of her first century as a char- 
tered city. The City Council elected Richard H. 
Bayard as the first Mayor. Before this time 
the Quaker conscience was leavening the place 
with ideals that took the form of political 
liberalism, even radicalism. In 1820, when 
Jefferson seemed to hear a prophetic fire-bell 
in the night, because of the bitterness over the 
slavery question aroused by the application of 
Maine and Missouri for admission to the Union, 
a great meeting at the Town Hall declared 
against the further extension of slavery. Public 
sentiment as a whole at Wilmington was con- 
servative as to slavery and as to many another 

163 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

matter, but the still small voice of the Quaker 
conscience persisted; Quaker patience was 
not exhausted by opposition or delay; Quaker 
courage was undaunted by threats, unprovoked 
to retaliation by curses. Rural Delaware, even 
more conservative, was by this time rather 
cold toward Wilmington. Then came the 
Civil War to widen the breach between city 
and country, especially between the strong 
Union majority of Wilmington, and a consider- 
able minority in Southern Delaware more or 
less sympathetic with the Confederacy. Other 
causes, chiefly economic and political, widened 
the breach still further, through the remainder 
of the Nineteenth Century and through part of 
what has passed of the Twentieth, though in- 
fluences tending toward unity have been es- 
pecially active for at least a decade. The Civil 
War found and left Wilmington a small city of 
rough cobbled streets and some thousands of 
little red houses, with a few of greater size, 
very few of greater grace, no public building of 
real beauty, no passably good hotel. This was 
the local metropolis of a rather small surround- 
ing territory, visited by shopping country-folk, 
who drove twelve or fifteen miles "to town," as 
the phrase went. Many did much of their shop- 
ping in "the City," the term for Philadelphia. 

164 



WILMINGTON 



Wilmington lost much to Philadelphia, some- 
thing to Baltimore, but local manufactures were 
growing in importance. Country-folk, fearing 
highwaymen, still whipped hard in passing 
''Folly Woods", on the edge of the city, a 
place of ill omen since the days of the famous 
''Sandy Flash." 

The city grew slowly in population, but 
gradually extended its boundaries to the Dela- 
ware, and pathetically wished in vain for "a 
road to the river. ' ' Wilmington gained at New 
Castle's expense, when the larger city took the 
courts, and left its smaller neighbor only the 
prison, the whipping post and the, pillory — 
as it were a local Botany Bay. A common- 
place new Court House was built at Wilming- 
ton of green stone, "an appropriate color," said 
George Gray, who loved his home town of New 
Castle, and disapproved the change.^ 

It was in this time of Wilmington's dol- 
drums that William Thomas Croasdale, a sort of 
human volcanic eruption of humor and passion, 
as if two centuries of Quaker suppression had 
burst bounds in him, established Every Evening, 

' Both the City Council and the Board of Education in 
these days had their absurdities. A member of the latter 
body indignantly denounced a fellow member of the opposite 
party as "a damned cohort." He had heard the political 
phrase "cohorts of the opposition." 

165 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

Wilmington's first enterprising daily news- 
paper. Croasdale's uncompromising temper, 
Quaker conscience, unconquerable idealism, and 
incurably sanguine courage in the presence of 
difiQculties, financial and other, joined to a Puck- 
ish instinct for epigrammatic wit that stung, 
and Benvenuto Cellini's habit of hitting harder 
than he quite realized, made him all his life the 
self-sacrificing hero of lost causes, the leader 
of failing enterprises. He lived to find his true 
element in New York, where he joined the 
propaganda of Henry George, and charmed night 
after night at the Reform Club groups of men 
who came into the cafe to hear his brilliant talk. 
No more generous wit than Croasdale ever lived, 
for he welcomed with wide-mouthed laughter 
and applause the wit of others, even when it 
was at his expense. 

Few chiefs ever had more loyal subordinates 
than Croasdale's, for he recognized with prompt 
praise all good work, and mourned that he could 
not reward it with better pay. He grinned with 
appreciation when a subaltern of Every Even- 
ing's staff, in that newspaper's time of struggle, 
said that no possible increase of salary could 
make amends for the increased difficulty of 
getting the week's pay from the badgered ca- 
shier. Two of his liiglily competent aides, both 

166 



WILMINGTON 



now gone to that beyond where earthly cares irk 
not, were George W. Humphrey, and Jerome 
Bonaparte Bell. Humphrey, the most amiable of 
giants, with unequaled working powers, a dis- 
tinguished gift of simple English style, a capa- 
cious memory, and an accurate knowledge of 
several languages, had a child's unsuspicious 
attitude toward the world at large. He returned 
to the office one day after an interview with a 
minor city officer, who had used an insulting 
phrase. Humphrey, slow to wrath, suddenly 
realized its import and, seating himself for an in- 
stant, wrote a few lines on a scrap of paper, 
and disappeared. He returned a few minutes 
later, bearing from the offender an abject apol- 
ogy with his name, a signature that Humphrey 
had extorted by looming over the victim, and 
saying firmly, "Sign here." Bell, who left 
Every Evening to found the Sunday Star, now 
the Delmarvia Star, and to become eventually 
one of Wilmington's Park Commissioners, was 
a North Carolinian who never lost his Tar Heel 
flavor. He had in youth a rather raw rebellion 
against conventional religion, which attitude 
was softened in time into that religion of 
humanity, which he expressed in two or three 
volumes of verse. Modern journalism at 
Wilmington had its origin in Every Evening's 

167 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

early hardships under Croasdale, and his ill 
paid but enthusiastically loyal staff. The in- 
fluence of the newspaper for good, under the 
spur of Croasdale 's vigorous and honest edito- 
rial page, cannot well be rated too high. 

To the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century 
and the first decade of the Twentieth belongs 
the busy career of Howard Pyle, the only 
Delawarean to win wide public recognition at 
home and abroad as both illustrator and writer. 
In the former art he ranks with the scant half 
dozen masters, and very high at that, whom 
America has produced. Death came to him far 
too early, when he was still growing, with the 
promise of greater work in both arts than 
his best accomplished. Pyle was an odd 
blend of Quaker mysticism, pratical busi- 
ness instinct as applied to his dealings with 
publishers, and a taste for comfort and even 
luxury of living, without cheap display. He was 
a tireless worker, and he inexorably demanded 
tireless work of the pupils at the school of art 
and illustrative design that he founded at 
Wilmington, a school out of which has grown 
thC; city's notable group of illustrators and 
painters. His sensitive face, ripened with 
years into an expression of illumined benevo- 
lence, his amply tall, broad and well made figure, 

168 




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WILMINGTON 



his quickly sympathetic smile and laugh, are 
recalled by hundreds. Pyle's eager en- 
thusiasm for causes, for persons, and for a busy 
man's relaxing avocations, was the wonder of 
his acquaintances, and his gentle and affection- 
ate helpfulness is a precious memory to those 
who called him friend. 

Lewis Cass Vandegrift, of earliest Dutch 
stock, was much associated with Howard Pyle, 
though in tastes and temperament the two were 
mde apart. As said in his quaint, but truly sym- 
pathetic way, Isaac Pennypacker, for a time of 
Wilmington, but originally a Pennsylvanian, 
and for many years of Philadelphia, * ' Vandegrift 
got through soon." This was Pennypacker 's 
way of connoting the far too early death 
of one who had steadily ripened and en- 
riched his mind and spirit, and who still 
promised much when death came. After 
graduation at Delaware College and the 
Harvard Law School, he entered the law office 
of George Gray as a student, and later became 
partner of Edward G. Bradford. When Mr. 
Bradford ascended the Federal bench left 
vacant by his father's death, Vandegrift formed 
a partnership of liis own to which came Chan- 
cellor Charles M. Curtis. As United States 
District Attorney Vandegrift found himself pit- 

1G9 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

ted in an important case against his old precep- 
tor, and the jury disagreed. Vandegrift, who 
had genial humorous perceptions, liked to tell of 
an incident connected with the case. After the 
failure of the jury to agree, he went tired out to 
his office in the Federal Building, and leaned 
his head on the desk for a reviving nap. A 
court oflBcer who found him thus, laid a hand 
on his shoulder, and said consolingly, *'Mr. 
Vandegrift, if I'm ever accused of a crime I 
hope you'll be the prosecutor." 

"With the World War came the new Wilming- 
ton, the greater city of the Twentieth Century's 
second — and now third — decade. Between 1910 
and 1920 Wilmington absorbed the whole growth 
of the state in population, and reached 110,000, 
a gain of more than twenty-five per cent. 
Wilmington's shipbuilding industries, as many 
others, had been artificially stimulated for more 
than half the decade. Above all other industries, 
that of the Du Fonts expanded to fabulous size, 
in answer to a limitless demand for munitions 
by the nations at death-grips with the Central 
empires. The employes of the concern increased 
by many thousands, its profits by hundreds of 
millions. What had been a large family under- 
taking, so to speak, had developed almost over 
night into one of the world's most gigantic 

170 



WILMINGTON 



industries, now given in large measure to de- 
structive production. Men, women and children, 
persons from all sorts of occupations, and per- 
sons of none, were automatically drawn to the 
company by the high wages offered. Wilming- 
ton entered upon a prosperity largely fictitious, 
because so many thousands were highly paid 
for helping on with the necessary work of 
producing things to be blown into smoke, or to 
minister otherwise to a world engaged in whole- 
sale slaughter. There was a short but wild pe- 
riod of speculation in Du Pont stocks, and the 
lucky, some of whom had recently lived upon 
modest salaries, were soon building showy new 
houses, and rolling about in costly motor 
cars. The approach of changed conditions 
and a few painful scandals helped to halt 
speculation, and with the demobilization of 
the armies after the war came the demobi- 
lization of the Du Pont munitions fac- 
tories. Anticipating what the thoughtless had 
not anticipated, the inevitable chill that now 
came upon industry, the house of Du Pont de 
Nemours had expanded with the hope and ex- 
pectation of turning much of the vast munitions 
plant to the uses of peace, but in spite of all that 
foresight and care could do in this and other 
manufactures, the inevitable process of contrac- 

171 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

tion brought to Wilmington unemployment and 
hard times. The city learned by the bitter way 
of experience that only the few can be enriched 
by destructive production, that one-half of the 
world can never hope to escape entirely what 
brings ruin and despair to the other half. Even 
much of the amazing constructive work that the 
Du Fonts had executed in furtherance of their 
expanded business was in some measure lost. 
The new Wilmington of the new century's 
newest decade has its business centre at the Du 
Pont Building, where is the first modern business 
oflQce structure, hotel and theatre in one that the 
city has known, such a structure as would grace 
the greatest urban community. Witliin a stone's 
throw is the other most strildng monument of 
the new Wilmington, the State, County, and 
Municipal Building, as seen from Market Street 
across the handsome Rodney Square, a tiling of 
rare beauty. The domestic and social side 
of the new city is expressed in suburban and 
semi-suburban homes, some modest enough, 
others semi-palatial. Everett Johnson of New- 
ark, as Secretary of State epigrammatist in 
ordinary to the Governor, once said to Coleman 
Du Pont that Delaware had two capitols, one on 
Dover Green, the other the Du Pont Building, 

172 



WILMINGTON 



and perhaps at the moment there was more 
truth in this than in most epigrams, as there 
was in Johnson's postscript, to the effect that 
he could not always tell in which capitol resided 
the government of the State. 

As a matter of fact, active men from all over 
Delaware meet at the Du Pont Building, though 
the canny ** down-stater" is apt to lodge and 
feed at some simpler place. Some critics think 
the architect of an admirable and admirably ad- 
ministered business building and hotel missed 
the precious opportunity to connote in its style 
the twisted threads of Delaware's past — 
Swedish, Dutch, English. Instead he has given 
the interior of the structure an essentially 
French tone, as if in consonance with its name. 
When the wondering girl from rural Delaware, 
for girls in those parts still wonder, after dan- 
cing in a travesty of the Hall of Mirrors at 
Versailles, turns for rest to the Du Barry room, 
she perhaps says, to her partner from the 
University at Newark, ''Who was Du Barry, a 
relative of the Du Fonts ?' ' to which the pinking 
youth stammers, ''Madame Du Barry, ah, ah, 
she was the — the — friend of a King of France, 
Louis, Louis, — I forget his number; but there 
goes the music for our next dance-" 

Beneath the ti'nsel and thie mock cosmo- 

173 



/ 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

politanism of the new Wilmington, with its thin 
veneer of sculptured marble, lives the little red 
Wilmington of fifty years ago. After the ague of 
fever and chill, the disease that comes with war, 
the sound, sober idealism of the Quaker spirit, 
come down from the Wilmington of William 
Shipley, lives on. Step aside two or three blocks, 
and you find the little red houses in rows along 
shaded and not too well paved streets, the 
little red houses with gardens and grapevines 
hidden in mid-block, homes of the working thou- 
sands who are to help with muscle and brain 
to build the chastened city of the near future, to 
father the children who shall build the greater 
— and, let us hope — better city of the next 
half -century. 



CHAPTER XII. 
COUNTY TOWNS AND OTHERS 



MORE than a dozen county seats, at least 
twenty other cities and villages of various 
sizes, and scores of cross-roads hamlets, and 
tiny settlements clustered about tidal *' land- 
ings," house what may by a stretching of lan- 
guage be called the urban population of the Pen- 
insula, as distinguished from that large part of 
the inhabitants living directly upon the soil and 
cultivating it for profit, or drawing their live- 
lihood from the waters. Many dwellers in 
small communities are farmers or farm labor- 
ers, and in the cities and villages of the coast 
and the tidal streams live fishermen, as such 
essentially rural in their outlook as in their 
occupations. Thus, much more than half the in- 
habitants outside Wilmington live upon the soil 
and from it, or upon and from the bordering 
waters. No incorporated community except Wil- 
mington has more than 10,000 inhabitants. Most 
county seats have less than 5000, some less than 
3000, a few less than 2000. Georgetown, county 
seat of Sussex, and Elkton of Cecil, Chestertown 



175 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

of Maryland's Kent, Easton of Talbot, Denton 
of Caroline, Centerville of Queen Anne 's, Snow 
Hill of Worcester, and Princess Anne of Somer- 
set are the smaller county seats. 

Elkton, a late Seventeenth Century settle- 
ment, incorporated more than 125 years ago, has 
had steamboat communication with Baltimore 
intermittently for the better part of a century. 
It is on the Pennsylvania's line between Phila- 
delphia and Washington, and on the Lincoln^* 
Highway. The town has some old manufacturing 
establishments, has long had a bar of more than 
common repute, and an agreeable social life. Of 
late years Elkton has been conspicuous upon the 
matrimonial map of the world as a convenient 
Gretna Green, a repute ill-fitting with its 
dignified past. 

Chestertown has more interesting old home- 
steads than any other town of its size on the 
Peninsula, and is further distinguished as the 
seat of Washington College, founded late in the 
Eighteenth Century. Some ports of the Penin- 
sula have greater rivers to bear their local 
commerce, yetnone has a lovelier peaceful water- 
front than that of Chestertown upon Chester 
River, a more charming daylight voyage to 
Baltimore. Centerville and Denton are isolated 
by reason of slow and tortuous communications 

176 




AN EMBOWERED HOMESTEAD AT EASTON 




o 

o 
o 



COUNTY TOWNS AND OTHERS 

— I 

with the outside world, the former by rail, 
the latter by rail and river. An amusing 
miscalculation as to the relative ''beam" of two 
handsome new steamers, and the **draw" of 
Dover Bridge condemns Denton to one boat a 
week in ordinary seasons, and deprives many 
travellers of that singularly charming and 
restful voyage to the headwaters of the Chop- 
tank. Each town ministers to a rich agricul- 
tural region. 

Easton, like ancient Rome and Tangier 
Island, has its harbor well outside its own limits. 
Nevertheless, the nightly sound of the steamboat 
whistle at Easton Point on the lovely Tred Avon, 
reminds Eastonians that a night's comfortable 
sleep, rocked by the waves of the Chesapeake, 
will bring all who wish at early morning to 
Baltimore, and a long business day, to be fol- 
lowed by an equally comfortable homeward voy- 
age. One realizes the prosperity of Easton 's sur- 
rounding country at sight of the many scores 
of automobiles parked about the Public Square 
on Saturday night. The town has a few of the 
loveliest old embowered homesteads of the 
Eastern Shore, and scattered through the coun- 
try round about, on the Tred Avon and the 
Miles River, are noble ''water situations," some 
of them, such as the Lloyd place, occupied by 

12 177 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

the family for eight generations, famous in 
local annals for open-handed hospitality through 
two-and-a-half centuries. Easton is a town of 
interesting traditions connected with the Revo- 
lutionary War. Upon a plantation hard by was 
born Frederick Douglass, the slave who rose to 
fame as the most distinguished man of his race 
in America. His memories of Talbot county 
were mingled of bitter and sweet, but he never 
forgot the kind mistress who taught him to read, 
and thus gave him the key that unlocked the 
shackles of slavery. 

Among the county-seats of the Peninsula, 
Princess Anne and Snow Hill are peculiarly 
famed for social charm dating back into the 
early national and colonial periods. Some of 
the great plantations of the lower Eastern 
Shore lie about Princess Anne, and not a few 
of them have preserved in perfection their 
hospitable old mansions, though Princess Anne 
itself is largely a town of wooden dwellings, 
unpretentious outwardly, but often agree- 
able within by reason of dignified rooms, rich 
antiques, and portraits by such painters as the 
Peales, such miniaturists as St. Memin. The 
huge Teagle house, dating from the early years 
of the last century, testifies to the persistence 
of the taste for building on a large scale, and the 

178 



COUNTY TOWNS AND OTHERS 

box garden of the Gale homestead, planted 
more than three-quarters of a century ago by 
General Handy, is one of Princess Anne's show 
places. George W. Maslin of Princess Anne 
treasures probably the most interesting collec- 
tion of Victoriana in America, the gift of a 
remote relative attached first to the house- 
hold of the Duke of Kent and then to that 
of Victoria. Among these curios is the mis- 
fit ** garter" made for Albert Edward when 
he became a knight of the historic order. 

Snow Hill, dating from 1684 and named prob- 
ably for a district of London, has, like Princess 
Anne, two old churches. Episcopal and Pres- 
byterian, the latter founded by Makemie.^ The 
difficulties of navigation in the upper reaches of 
the Pocomoke have stimulated the growth of the 
active rival town, Pocomoke City, sixteen miles 
farther down the river than Snow Hill, a com- 
munity recently much gratified by the opening of 
a handsome bridge across its stream. Snow Hill 
grows slowly, but its slow growth has not pre- 
vented its marked improvement in the last 
twenty years, for it has admirably paved and 
well-kept streets, richly shaded by huge trees, 
electric lights, a good water supply, and a spirit 

^ The Presbyterian church building, erected as a memorial 
to the founder, is of comparatively recent date. 

179 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

— ■ '■■■ ■ - - - -■ —1 

among its inhabitants that avails to make it 
one of the neatest towns on the Peninsula. 

As to Georgetown, it was arbitrarily made 
the capital of Sussex county because of its 
central position, and regardless of the question 
of communications. The town is without a 
river, and it stands on a branch railway. It 
has remarkable quiet charm by reason of its 
many seasoned old shingled dwellings, sweet 
with the Quakerish gray of weathered cedar, 
most famous among them ''The Judges." An 
admirable Court House in a densely shaded pub- 
lic square gives Georgetown official distinction. 

For many years past some villages of the 
Peninsula have shown an arrested development. 
A few places such as Fredericktown in Cecil 
county, named for the son of George II, who 
dying young (''Fritz is dode, deal the carts!") 
left his stupid brother George, to become king, 
ambitiously planned in colonial days, may be 
said to have "died abornin'." Georgetown in 
Kent, on the opposite side of the Sassafras 
River, named for the prince who became king, 
has had like fate. Both towns have solid and 
well proportioned surviving Georgian dwellings. 
Delaware City, founded on hopes raised by the 
digging of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, 
and laid out upon a considerable scale, has had, 

180 



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BETTERTON ON THE SASSAFRAS RIVER 




IN HARBOR AT SNOW HILL 



COUNTY TOWNS AND OTHERS 

like its neighbor, Chesapeake City at the other 
end of the canal, near a century of slow growth 
and languishing disappointments, though both 
now live as those not without further hope, in 
the improvement of their water way. Odessa, 
which dropped its historic name Cantwell's 
Bridge to take on that of the Black Sea grain 
port, found that Appoquinimink Creek could 
not compete with the Delaware Railroad as a 
grain carrier for the broad and rich wheat 
lands of the superb country round about, and 
saw Middletown, three miles away, grow into a 
considerable place, as a railway town in the 
midst of as fine a farming district as any 
American country side has to show. Middletown 
has four times the population and more than 
four times the activity of Odessa, though it 
lacks some elements of Odessa's picturesque 
interest. Smyrna, in nothing Oriental to justify 
its name, made its great refusal when the 
Delaware Railroad was built, and has since seen 
the little station of Clayton hard by grow up into 
a considerable and active village. But Smyrna 
remains a place of distinctive character in the 
midst of a rich agricultural community, with 
pleasing suburban homesteads hard by, best 
known among them Belmont Hall of the 
Speakman family, locally famed since colonial 

181 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

days for its delightful garden and for its 
hospitality, a tradition that was more than a 
tradition, until -the charming old house was 
burned to the ground in the Winter of 1921. 
Newark, a few miles South-east of Dela- 
ware's Northern arc, chartered by George II, 
for more than 150 years the seat of Newark 
Academy, for nearly a century the seat of 
Delaware College, now the University of Dela- 
ware, stretched its slow length for nearly a mile 
along the highway between Philadelphia and 
Baltimore, before it thought of spreading into 
other streets. A century-and-a-half after incor- 
poration the town had not much passed 1000 
in population, but the Curtis paper mills, the 
vulcanized fibre industry, the recent rapid 
expansion of the University of Delaware, the 
founding of the affiliated Women's College, 
which instantlv demonstrated its essential value 
to the State at large, the awakening of the local 
community to public needs, and the multiplied 
activities of the Agricultural Experiment 
Station and the Agricultural Department, of 
which it was the early nucleus, have now set 
Newark among the larger and more important 
towns of the Peninsula, with a seemingly assured 
growth in population, and more especially 
notable as a centre of the State's higher inter- 

182 



COUNTY TOWNS AND OTHERS 

ests. Newark has few survivals of its earlier 
self, and little distinction in domestic architec- 
ture, but the Watson Evans house, now Purnell 
Hall, a fine example of the smaller Georgian 
dwellings, set the key with its chimneyed and 
semi-luned gable for the domestic buildings of 
the University. 

Seaford, the leading town of Western Sus- 
sex, at the head of steamboat navigation on 
the noble Nanticoke, has its tradition of ship- 
building and of local ship owners and sea 
captains trading along the Atlantic Coast, to 
the West Indies, and even to Europe, though its 
nautical history it shares with the older hamlet 
of Concord, three miles distant. Up nearly to 
Concord came, through most of the Eighteenth 
and a large part of the Nineteenth Century, 
British vessels to load with kiln-dried corn meal, 
ground at mills established by men to whom 
Lord Baltimore, then exercising jurisdiction 
over most of the Peninsula, had patented 5000 
acres of land. Seaford, high set upon a bluff, 
looks best from the river, and the latter takes 
on above thq town a bold and romantic character 
totally unlike its peaceful self in its dignified 
progress to the Chesapeake through thirty-five 
miles of alluvial plain. Little Sharptown, a few 
miles below Seaford, product of an old ship- 

183 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

building and a newer basket-making industry, 
has a steady prosperity that has made almost all 
families home-owners with a bank account. Be- 
tween Seaford and Sharptown, Laurel Creek 
enters the Nanticoke, and the town of Laurel, 
ambitious of being a seaport, has its wharves 
used by small crafts of burden, and its light- 
draft power boats taking passengers to the 
steamboat wharf at Sharptown. 

Newest of all large and active communities 
on the Peninsula is Crisfield, founded two 
generations ago by John W. Crisfield, a widely 
known lawyer of Princess Anne, who believed 
that a port with safe harbor on the edge of 
Tangier Sound's rich waters, and nearly 100 
miles farther seaward than Baltimore, might 
quickly develop a^arge commerce and important 
manufactures. Mr. Crisfield did not live to see his 
dream realized, nor indeed has it yet been real- 
ized, but Crisfield has grown into an active little 
city, chartered as such a dozen years ago, with 
a busy main street that looks like that of a raw 
Western mining village, but a residence district 
of very different character. One forgets on the 
sea front, with its inextinguishable charm 
of salt water and varied shipping, the squalid 
shabbiness of the main street, traversed by a 
steam railway track, and double-lined with 

184 




SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CUSTOM HOUSE, CHESTERTOWN 




Photo by Louis Kaufcann and Sons, Baltimore 

SAND DUNES AND LIGHT HOUSE, CAPE HENLOPEN 




TURN-BASIN AT SALISBURY 



COUNTY TOWNS AND OTHERS 

business buildings, many of them mere make- 
shifts, though most of them busy day and night. 
In the presence of the harbor, one almost forgets 
even the odor of mountainous oyster-shell heaps, 
over which plane flocks of buzzards, forever 
disappointed at the Barmecide feast, stubbornly 
hopeful that behind the strong appeal to a single 
sense there must be something really substan- 
tial. Crisfield builds much of its business area 
by dumping into the shallows oyster-shells from 
which has been extracted the meat, to be canned 
for the consumption of inlanders less fastidious 
than Eastern Shore folk as to the age of the 
oyster they eat. As to the business district, 
where among other curious things one finds a 
''terrapin farm" peopled by diamond-backs that 
come to dinner at the tinkling of bells, it is a sort 
of tiny vulgar Venice, not without a picturesque- 
ness of its own, due to the grouping of crude 
structures along the water front, the canals and 
their bridges, the unexpected narrow and 
crooked ways, almost every one with its inspir- 
ing glimpse of the sea horizon, the troubled 
waters beneath the freshening breeze, serried 
spars and cordage. If the huddle of busy 
packeries looks too squalid on close view, there 
is perpetually the redeeming spectacle of that 
windy harbor, at da^^m., live Avitli hundreds of 

185 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

fishing craft under sail for the oystering or 
crabbing grounds of the Sound, while yet 
the breakfast smoke rises from the cook's 
galley; at evening, sweet with the sunset 
afterglow, and rich with sea-purples, through 
which slowly float in the returning fisher 
craft, vdth masts and sails silhouetted against 
the dusking glories of the far horizon. 
If the riches of the Chesapeake can be con- 
served, Crisfield may more than realize its 
founder's dream, and transform even its main 
street into a highway worthy of an active and 
thriving community. 

Lewes, which likes to boast itself the cradle 
of the State and the oldest scene of civilization 
in Delaware, is known to the maps of all the 
world as a port of call and report for the war- 
ships and the commerce of all nations, for the 
Delaware Breakwater here affords a safe and 
ample harbor for vessels bound to the Atlantic 
ports above Baltimore. Hard by is Rehoboth, 
for more than half a century the best known 
watering place in Delaware, founded originally 
by the Methodists as the site for Summer camp- 
meetings, but long frequented by the worldly, 
and a favorite resort, in seasons neither gay nor 
oppressively pious, for gunners and fishermen. 
The sand dunes of the coast hereabouts are inter- 

186 



COUNTY TOWNS AND OTHERS 

esting, and the mirage reflecting the church 
spire of Lewes seems at times to have the 
authenticity of a convincing occular fact. 

Cambridge, the county-seat of Dorchester, 
often called Dorset, long ago outstripped its 
neighbor of equally academic name, Oxford, a 
village fitly seated on the rarely beautiful Tred 
Avon, or Third Haven, as it is called by those 
who prefer plain prose. Sanguine Cantabrig- 
ians, indeed, prophesied 10,000 inhabitants for 
the city in 1920, but without anticipating the chill 
that the world's real war and mock peace 
brought to Cambridge, as to many another 
community. The city has a busy and beautiful 
harbor on the Choptank River, less than ten 
miles above the bay, where the stream is at 
least two-and-a-half miles wide. Craft of many 
sorts and sizes move about the harbor, and the 
fine old pillared mansion on the admirably paved 
and deeply shaded main street, the home of the 
local yacht club, looking out over the water 
across a rear garden shaded by a century old 
grapevine, seems to prove that nautical Cam- 
bridge is not solely utilitarian. In fact, the 
casual stranger often sees, with a pleasant shock, 
from the deck of the Baltimore-bound steamer 
on Summer afternoons, blissful visions of the 
native sea-nymphs, afloat in swift little motor 

187 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

boats, and clad in bathing costumes that 
emphasize with their gay colors the charms that 
they do not entirely conceal, perhaps are not 
intended to conceal. Incidentally Summer be- 
gins early and quits late in these genial waters, 
for here the sub-tropical quality of the mid- 
Chesapeake climate is a palpable fact. Never- 
theless Winter sometimes shows its Arctic face 
for weeks together, and one shivers sympathet- 
ically on Easter Sunday, to see a colored parson 
and' a neophyte wade fully clothed into the 
river until the water is more than waist-high, 
and starts with astonishment when the parson, 
after due and deliberate reading of ritual to 
the music of many hundred voices ashore, sud- 
denly shoves the candidate for baptism down- 
ward with merciless muscular arm, until he 
entirely disappears beneath the chilly surface. 
Such sights are to be seen from the boulevard, 
that Cambridge has built along the water front, 
commanding miles of the Choptank until it is 
lost in the distance of its far misty marriage 
with the Chesapeake. No other city of the 
Peninsula has so fine a highway edging 
its harbor. 

Milford, Delaware, bestrides Mispillion 
Creek with a foot in each county, Kent and 
Sussex, a settlement nearly 250 years old, an 

188 



COUNTY TOWNS AND OTHERS 

incorporated village for more than half the 
period since. Near the end of the Eighteenth 
Century, Milf ord had only 100 houses, probably 
less than 700 inhabitants. The place counted 
itself happy to be seated upon a broad tidal afflu- 
ent of Delaware Bay, and able to acquire impor- 
tance in shipbuilding. Ambitious newer villages, 
such as Milton and Lincoln, have doubtless 
slowed Milf ord 's growth, but the place continues 
to be one of the larger and more important com- 
munities of the Peninsula, with a sound local 
sentiment, and like most of the older towns, it 
has agreeable survivals of its earlier domestic 
architecture. A notable undertaking is the 
Marshall Hospital, founded by Drs. William 
and Samuel Marshall, whose father and grand- 
father were local physicians. 

Salisbury, the county seat of Wicomico, 
latest created of Eastern Shore counties, and 
like its elder sister, Worcester, a child of Somer- 
set, stands at the head of navigation on the 
Wicomico, the largest of three Chesapeake 
tributaries bearing that name. For the last 
quarter-century Salisbury has grown faster 
than any other city of the Peninsula. In the 
decade 1900-10 its population grew by more 
than fifty-five per cent, and the census of 1920 
gives it nearly 10,000 inhabitants. In aspect 

189 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 



and spirit Salisbury is thoroughly modern, a 
little city of the present decade, with a new 
armory, a comparatively new State Hospital, 
a new building of the Y.M.C.A., and many new 
homes of prosperous citizens. It is significant 
that Salisbury's method of advertising herself 
is a systematic endeavor to make every visitor 
at home by a courteous welcome. The streets in 
Summer are fairly smothered beneath the 
dense foliage of great trees planted in double 
row. By far the most notable homestead in the 
place is that of the late Governor Elihu Jackson, 
a many-gabled dwelling that peeps from the 
trees and shrubbery of an ample garden behind 
a red brick wall bordering the highway for many 
hundred feet. Salisbury has railway connec- 
tions North and South by the New York, 
Philadelphia and Norfolk, East and West by 
the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic. By 
rail and water it does a large trade in lumber 
and its products, and it has perhaps the most 
varied industries of any Eastern Shore com- 
munity. In spite of a difficult approach by the 
river, necessitating a turn-basin for the Balti- 
more steamboats, Salisbury is one of the busiest 
up-river ports of the Peninsula. 

Village life in America has long stood with 
city folk as the synonym for errant taste, social 

190 



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CAMBRIDGE ON THE CHOPTANK 



M/l '1 


1 
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^ i 




WINDY DAY IN THE HARBOR OF CRISFIELD 



COUNTY TOWNS AND OTHERS 

dullness, and intellectual stagnation, until at 
length a native novelist has undertaken to em- 
body some such conception in a piece of highly 
popular and greatly detailed fiction. Forty 
years ago most villages of the Peninsula must 
have pleaded guilty to at least a considerable 
part of this indictment, and many of them would 
find it hard even now to win a verdict of a 
complete acquittal from a competent jury 
familiar with the facts. It is true that many 
local humorists have not gone beyond their 
anecdotage, and **that reminds me" is too often 
the prologue to a twice-told tale that might well 
have remained orginally untold. The evening 
call tends in some circles to drag its slow length 
along far beyond the time when all present 
have said, at least once, whatever they have in 
mind that could properly interest any other 
human being. Domestic incidents are told in 
maddening detail, and sometimes without a 
spark of redeeming humor to mitigate the 
infliction. The plot of a novel or a play out- 
lined with no intelligent regard for the relative 
interest or significance of parts, too often fills 
the gaps of conversation threatening a perma- 
nent silence and consequent social embarrass- 
ment. Small talk tends to be triturated to an 
impalpable powder, out of which all intellectual 

191 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

or spiritual nourishment has been thoroughly 
milled. But where is the paradise, urban or 
rural, guaranteed exempt from these and worse 
forms of social discomfort? 

As a matter of fact the county-seats of the 
Peninsula have had, some of them for a good 
many generations, their corps of presumably 
educated and intellectually alert lawyers, and 
many a small village has long had its group of 
men and women alive to the things of the spirit, 
to the movements and interests that stir man- 
kind the world over. Co-operative movements 
of various kinds have for many years past 
widened the social horizon of the village, espe- 
cially for women. Indeed the work that zealous 
women all over the Peninsula have done and 
are doing can hardly be overestimated. The 
motor car and improved highways are now knit- 
ting together widely sundered communities, and 
bringing them into sympathetic touch with the 
world at large. Wilmington, at the extreme 
North, is not more than three-and-a-half hours 
from the most distant county-seat in Dela- 
ware, is less than five hours from the most 
distant on the Eastern Shore above the Virginia 
line. Finally, village life on the Peninsula, as 
elsewhere, though still somewhat primitive in 

192 



COUNTY TOWNS AND OTHERS 

■ 

some aspects, has been developing new and 
better conditions even while the casual visitor 
was quoting the unfavorable opinion formed 
by other casual visitors a generation gone. 
Perhaps the worst indication is the comic 
eagerness of villages to develop, not as models 
of rural communities with the wholesome and 
natural charm of such, but as cheaply ambitious 
little cities, striving after the unattainable and 
looking like mere counterfeits. 



13 



CHAPTER XIIT 

DOVER AND NEWCASTLE 

■ 

DOVER and New Castle have interesting 
historical likenesses and equally inter- 
esting historical unlikenesses. Dover is now 
both state capital and county-seat, and New 
Castle is neither. But New Castle, possibly 
of Swedish origin, was the early Dutch capital 
and seat of justice, as the Dutch themselves 
contended, not merely of what we now call Dela- 
ware, but of the whole Peninsula above 
the Virginia line; and it served for about 
two centuries as county-seat of New Castle 
county, besides being the recognized chief place 
of the ** Three Counties on Delaware" in the 
early days of the Penns. Dover, by much the 
younger of the two, has had a' rather slow 
but steady growth, and seems assured of 
its permanent advantage as the capital of 
Delaware, even though Wilmington is the 
chief city of the Peninsula, and now and then 
takes on what may be called *' capitalistic " 
airs in matters political. New Castle has been 
the city of magnificent hopes and periodic 

194 



DOVER AND NEWCASTLE 



disappointments, but through good and bad 
fortune has remained a place of picturesquely 
interesting aspect and history, nor has it aban- 
doned the hopes to which its advantageous site 
gives it title. 

Dover was ''laid out," not in the mortuary 
sense in which some small and once ambitious 
towns had beginnings that proved, also their end, 
in 1717, when New Castle was possibly more 
than three-quarters of a century old, and a 
place of large promise. Not until Dover was 
sixty years old did it become the capital, and 
not until forty years later was it incorporated. 
Almost a century after its founding Dover, 
according to a gazeteer of the period, numbered 
only one hundred and twenty houses, and could 
have had hardly 800 inhabitants. According to 
the same authority, Dover then was built 
mostly of brick. The town already had a 
''parade," the richly handsome Public Square of 
today, on the East side of which was ' ' an elegant 
State House" built of brick. This building, 
which still stands to justify the opinion, gave 
the town, according to thej same chronicler, 
"an air of grandeur." Since that day, now 
nearly a century and a quarter fled, the Capitol 
has been much enlarged, if not outwardly im- 
proved. It should comfort lovers of what is 

195 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

best in our earlier public architecture to know 
that plans have been made for a further 
enlargement of the building, such as will restore 
its sadly lost bilateral symmetry. At this time, 
Dover had by way. of St. Jones Creek, the 
wharves of which were some distance from the 
little town, a somewhat brisk trade with Phila- 
delpliia. The outgoing cargoes were chiefly 
wheat and corn, with varied merchandise in 
return. Many communities on the small trib- 
utaries of Delaware Bay then used their own 
streams as commercial highways. Milford had 
an important commerce by way of Mispillion 
Creek, and little Fredericka sent grain to Phila- 
delphia by way of the Murderkill. Shallops 
carrying 1300 bushels of grain frequented 
the Mispillion. 

Dover's local importance antedated the 
definite assumption of complete statehood by 
Delaware in 1776, when the last Governor of 
Pennsylvania to * ' govern" also Delaware ceased 
his overlordship of the Three Counties. 
Next year the little State set up as its own chief 
magistrate John McKinly, magnificently enti- 
tling him ''President of Delaware." The tiny 
hamlet of the Eighteenth Century was the cen- 
tre of an important agricultural district, as it 
is even now. There were comfortable homes in 

196 



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Photograph by Auburn Post Card Mfg. Go.. Auburn, Indiana. 
OLD COURT HOUSE, NEW CASTLE 




AN OLD GEORGIAN MANSION AT NEW CASTLE 



DOVER AND NEWCASTLE 



the town, and considerable country seats round 
about. With a President presiding, Legislature 
assembled, and the Kent County Court holding 
sessions, Dover of the Revolutionary War, was 
a little capital of some justifiable pretentions. 
A volume of translations from Horace, and 
paraphrases of some Horatian odes, together 
with original verses of a gallant character, and 
a play dedicated to George Washington, its 
hero, all the work of one or more patriot army 
officers, celebrates the wit and beauty of Miss 
Vining and other ladies at Dover. The capital 
enjoyed its double distinction, and social life 
took on a touch of splendor. Miss Vining's 
repute of beauty reached even the French 
Court at Versailles, and Thomas Jefferson 
assured Marie Antoinette, whose curiosity was 
excited, that the Delaware girl was all that her 
French admirers reported. 

Perhaps it was this early social quality of 
Dover that has given to local society there, as 
at many another state capital, an attitude of 
detachment, if not of aloofness, toward the 
Legislature. That body, from the first extremely 
small in both branches, still numbers but a 
handful as compared with the legislatures of 
the sister states, and it normally meets only once 
in two years. For most of Delaware's existence, 

197 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

as a State, the Legislature has had little patron- 
age, made extremely small appropriations. In- 
creased wealth, and a general corporation law 
enabling the little commonwealth to charter 
and to tax corporations operating all over the 
United States, have vastly increased the public 
revenue, and magnified the office of legislator. 
At the same time public offices have been multi- 
plied, and salaries have risen, so that Legis- 
lature's importance as a dispenser of patronage 
has grown. It has lost much, however, of its 
high political significance through the popular 
election of United States senators. Dover 
enjoys the faint odor of scandal naturally 
attaching to a legislative body, at least accord- 
ing to the sensitive olfactories of the minority 
party inside and out, and smiles at the frantic 
struggle for small places within the gift of 
House or Senate, every second year; but the 
legislators cut no great figure in the social 
life of the town. Many of them, indeed, travel 
daily between their homes and the capital, and 
few habitually pass the week-end at Dover. 
Dover Green, officially the Public Square, is 
one of the most pleasing urban quarters of the 
Peninsula. It is well shaded, and many of the 
private homes facing the square have dignity, 

198 



DOVER AND NEWCASTLE 



and some have beauty. In summer the ample 
rear gardens are rich in foliage and bloom. The 
State House, the Court House, the County 
Building, and a hotel which at times has figured 
in politics, face the Public Square. Hard by is 
the State Armory, a recent addition to the 
public group. Old cemeteries of local and 
larger historic interest are near at hand. Two 
blocks off, at the corner of Loockerman and 
States Streets, is the brick postoffice, won from 
the Federal Government through the influence 
of Senator Eli Saulsbury, who was much crit- 
icized by his political enemies for having induced 
the country to endow his home town with a pub- 
lic building at the scandalous cost of $70,000. If 
Eli Saulsbury now concerns himself for sublu- 
nary things, he must reflect on the present 
standard of Federal expenditure, and exclaim 
in the words of a more celebrated character, 
**I am amazed at my own moderation!" 

The capital of Delaware produces other and 
more useful things than highly partisan and 
sometimes scandalous politics. St. Jones Creek, 
a delightful stream for pleasuring, still has 
some commercial uses. Dover is the seat of 
the Wilmington Conference Academy, a crea- 
tion of the Methodist Church, and one of the best 

199 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

preparatory schools of the Peninsula.^ Here, 
too, is the College for Colored Youth, admirably 
housed through the benevolence of Pierre Du 
Pont, and sharing with the University of 
Delaware, the Federal appropriation in aid of 
the so-called *' land-grant colleges", and in 
appropriations made under more recent legis- 
lation. The State Library of 80,000 volumes, 
with a lending and circulating department 
which sends books to all parts of the State, 
helps to give Dover a public distinction un- 
tainted with party politics. Half a dozen 
important manufacturing industries are estab- 
lished at Dover, and the city is in the midst of an 
agricultural and horticultural region that yearly 
grows in riclmess and importance. 

Dover has adorned itself with monuments 
to its Revolutionary past, and the interior 
decorations of the State House are done with 
effective taste. The city has steadily groAvn 
for the past generation at the average rate of 
ten per cent in each decade. It is feeling also, 
in common with other parts of the Peninsula, 

'The Conference Academy, since 1918 entitled The Wesley 
Collegiate Institute, was chartered in 1873. It now has 150 
students, ample buildings, and a faculty composed of college 
graduates. It has an endowment of $250,000, a considerable 
library and a normal department for the technical prepara- 
tion of teachers. 

200 



DOVER AND NEWCASTLE 



the modernizing effect of improved commun- 
ications. Dover, is certainly the only American 
capital, except perhaps Providence, that can be 
reached from the remotest corner of the State 
in less than three hours. A Delawarean of 
about half a century gone, George Karsner by 
name, added to the gaiety of nations, when as a 
witness before a committee of Congress, he 
delivered the menace, ** Gentlemen, the eyes of 
Delaware are upon you ! ' ' Perhaps legislators 
at Dover, knowing that any constituent can 
reach the State House in something between 
ten minutes and three hours, have at times an 
uncomfortable sense of being too much in the 
public eye. 

New Castle, unmistakably marked out by 
nature as the metropolis of the Peninsula, may 
yet realize that destiny. One tradition reports 
it as founded by the Swedes in 1640, more than 
three-quarters of a century before Wilmington 
took its present name, and the town was known 
to Europe when Wilmington was still an 
insignificant settlement. Here the Dutch built 
Fort Casimer in 1651 ; and in 1655, having con- 
quered New Sweden, they made New Castle 
their capital of the local area, calling it New 
Amstel. The place has had at one time or 
another at least seven names. Here landed Penn 

201 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

when he came to enter upon his vast possessions 
in the New World, and doubtless his impressions 
then of New Castle helped to determine him to 
beg the Peninsula of his royal patron. It was 
at New Castle, as the local seat of Dutch power, 
that Colonel Utie blustered in 1659, claiming the 
Peninsula to the Delaware shore in the name 
of Lord Baltimore. Twenty years later, the 
Labadist missionaries drank Jaquet's apple 
brandy upon the site of the future Wilmington, 
but made stay at New Castle in the comfortable 
home of Ephraim Herrman. They thought the 
toMTi worth sketching for the illustrations of 
their diary, a sketch unfortunately lost. 

New Castle then had forty or fifty houses, 
must have had a population of 300, or possibly 
400. It was not till half a century later that 
Wilmington had 600. William Penn testifies 
that New Castle and the region round about 
in his day showed no symptom of race suicide. 
"As they are a proper people," he writes, ''and 
strong of body, so they have fine children, and 
almost every house full of them; rare to find 
one of them without three or four boys, and as 
many girls — some six, or seven or eight sons." 
The Labadists remarked New Castle's noble 
site on the great river, with a view Southward 
into Delaware Bay. New Castle could hardly 

202 



DOVER AND NEWCASTLE 



then have held as a serious rival the tiny 
Swedish settlement six miles distant by land, 
but separated from the deep water of the 
Delaware by some miles of the narrow and 
crooked Christiana. Even Penn's new capital 
above the mouth of the Schuylkill, New Castle 
could scarcely fear, for Philadelphia was 
forty miles farther from the sea and almost 
fifty years younger. 

Wilmington and New Castle were both 
villages of moderate size in the middle of the 
Eighteenth Century. Half a century later the 
transfer of the capital of the United States to 
Washington placed New Castle on the direct 
land-and-water route between New England 
and the Middle States, and the new seat of 
government. It seemed inevitable that the 
village should grow into an important port and 
city, for it was also regarded as on the direct 
route from the coast to the new West. In the 
first decade of the Nineteenth Century, New 
Castle had its regular and frequent freight and 
passenger packets to Philadelphia, its turnpike 
across the Peninsula and connecting packets 
at Frenchtown on the Elk River to Baltimore. 
Two decades later it had its railway to French- 
town, and steamboats had long taken the place 
of the sailing packets. Almost every important 

203 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

public man in the United. States must have 
visited New Castle in those days, and as 
county-seat it had its corps of lawyers; even 
those of Wilmington, then and for more than 
half a century later, had to come to court at 
Newcastle, and argue cases in the Court House 
where the Dutch judges had sat. New Castle 
believes this house to be the oldest public build- 
ing in the United States. 

With the development of the all-rail route to 
Baltimore and Washington by way of Wilming- 
ton, came New Castle's first great disappoint- 
ment, a greater than the little town had 
realized in the founding of Pliiladelpliia. 
New Castle of 1807 had about 160 houses 
and, 1200 inhabitants. Hardly another town 
on the Peninsula except Wilmington had 
so many, and New Castle with deep water 
at its wharves, the way to Eurotpe in sight, 
and freight and passengers pouring through 
the town on the route to and from Wash- 
ington and the West, seemed destined to 
outgrow Wilmington, and make no mean show 
beside Philadelphia. Growth continued during 
the next two decades, but before the third was 
ended, the frost come with the diversion of 
traffic and travel to the all-rail route. Even be- 
fore 1830 the route from Philadelpliia across the 

204 



DOVER AND NEWCASTLE 



mountains to Pittsburg was competing with 
the East-and-West-bound traffic across the 
Peninsula, and taking from the importance of 
New Castle as a point of transfer. 

New Castle is one of the few American 
endowed towns. At the opening of the 
Eighteenth Century, when William Penn still 
had to fear the claims of the Calverts, he sought 
to conciliate public opinion at New Castle by giv- 
ing the town about 1000 acres of ''commons." 
The gift, long neglected, was used for free cattle 
pasturage, and as a general ''woodlot." It 
was finally cut up into farms of considerable 
size, which were rented upon rather long leases 
and at moderate rent to local farmers. When 
best managed, the commons-farms paid most of 
the community's public expenses. Later the rent 
of the commons went to pay the interest on 
water bonds, for New Castle had received its 
first city charter in 1874. There now began a 
new era of hope, for an important manufactur- 
ing concern had established works within the 
city limits. This new hope proved at least as 
disappointing as a hope of like origin consid- 
erably earlier in the same century. After a 
stimulated growth that astonished the city 
and its neighbors, again came the chill, and long 
rows of wage earners ' houses were left empty ; 

205 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

to make matters worse, the county-seat was 
transferred to Wilmington. New Castle fell 
asleep, but the pleasing heritage of the past did 
not fall into decay, and the place remained 
notable liistorically, architecturally, and so- 
cially. The guns of warring Europe broke once 
more New Castle's slumber; hope and activity 
again appeared. A speculator bought the 
empty dwellings, and soon filled them and more, 
for New Castle became a seat of war work upon 
a huge scale. Every available hole and cranny 
of the old town was filled with lodgers. Wage- 
earners, men and women, came into the town 
every morning afoot, by steam railway, by 
suffocatingly crowed electric cars, by boat, by 
automobile. Wages were high; work awaited 
all who came. So long as the war lasted the new 
'* prosperity" continued, and local profiteers 
took their harvest ; but soon after the end of the 
war once more came the chill of disappointment, 
and the temporarily swollen population of New 
Castle shrank toward the old size of 1910. 

New Castle lives not without hope, for some 
substantial gains of the war period remain as a 
potentiality of the future, and there the city 
stands, with the route to Europe still in full 
view. Through generations of alternate hope 
and disappointment, the serene beauty of the 

206 



DOVER AND NEWCASTLE 



old town has lived on. Here are some of the 
largest and handsomest colonial survivals in the 
United States, and a few quaint relics of the 
city's almost earliest past. Its Public Square, 
said to have been laid out by Peter Stuyvesant, 
with its rich adornment of great American elms, 
spouting far overhead in green fountains, is 
like a charming bit out of some Old World 
capital. The Court House is a genuinely 
distinguished pile, and the spire of Immanuel 
Episcopal Church is a perfect thing. The tomb 
of a mid-century Holcomb in the churchyard 
has a bit of carving such as our native 
*' mortuary sculptors" seldom produce. The 
Rodney house, still occupied by those of the 
name,2 is an admirable bit of Georgian architec- 
ture, though it dates from the year after the 
Fourth Royal George vacated the British 
throne. On its walls hang two original 
portraits of men who signed the Declaration of 
Independence, and here, too, are many memen- 
tos of Caesar Rodney. Good Doctor Spotswood, 
whose name connotes the Virginian Knights of 
the Golden Horseshoe, and whose tall slender 
figure loomed for many years in the pulpit of 
the Presbyterian Church, still has his repre- 
sentatives at New Castle. 

* Richard S. Rodney was appointed a Judge of the Dela- 
ware Courts early in 1922. 



CHAPTER XIV 
ISLANDS OF THE CHESAPEAKE 

IF the St. Lawrence has its ** Thousand 
Islands," the Chesapeake has its ten thou- 
sand. Delaware Bay has fewer, indeed very few 
that compare in human interest and historic 
significance with many of the Chesapeake. 
Among the more famous islands of Delaware 
Bay are Pea Patch, on which stands the 
historic Fort Delaware at the very head of the 
bay, long a useless monument of the past, now a 
modern fortification correlated with batteries 
on the New Jersey shore to dominate the ship 
channel, Eeedy Island, the Roet Island of the 
Dutch, now the site of the Quarantine Station, 
and Bombay Hook Island, once the patrimony 
of that early Bayard who for a time cast his lot 
with the Labadists. Sheltered behind the 
Southern extremity of Assateague, the long 
narrow peninsula dropped like a plumbline 
seventy miles Southward from the South- 
eastern corner of Delaware, is Chincoteague, 
the most important and interesting island of 
Accomack; and from Chincoteague downward 

208 




A QUAINT SURVIVAL ON KENT ISLAND 



ISLANDS 



to Cape Charles, and thence upward along the 
Chesapeake to the Maryland line, are the thou- 
sand other islands fringing the coast of 
Virginia's two Eastern Shore counties. 

The islanders of the Chesapeake are a 
curious variant of the almost pure British 
stock on the main land, if anything of even 
purer breed as having been less modified by 
immigration. Surnames are so few on some of 
the islands that men must be distinguished from 
one another by descriptive additions, such as 
''Long John," ''Ked Tom," "Richard of 
William," patronymics in the making. The 
complexities of blood relationship upon islands 
with from 500 to 1500 inhabitants would puzzle 
the College of Heralds, but not an Eastern 
Shoreman. A man at Princess Anne, being asked 
whether one of like name at Saulsbury was 
related to him, answered without hesitation, 
*'Yes, we're sixth cousins." 

Mainland folk have been prone to think their 
kinsmen of the islands a bit barbaric, for the 
life of the islanders, mostly fishermen and 
other followers of the sea, has long been simpler, 
cruder, indeed, than that of the land owners, pro- 
fessional men, traders, and mechanics **on the 
main." Simplicity and crudity still persist 
among the islanders, as among the ''back 

14 209 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

countrv" folk in much of the rural Peninsula, 
but less than formerly everj^where. Motor 
boats, the telephone, more frequent mails, have 
brought Eastern Shore folk of every sort nearer 
together, have quickened and broadened their 
intellectual perceptions, whatever their occu- 
pations, wherever their homes. No sensitively 
and sympathetically intelligent stranger can 
know the islanders and fail to taste the stimu- 
lating tang of their native quality. They may 
seem in some matters, men of the Seventeenth 
Century, rather than of the Twentieth, but 
beneath the exterior of even the crudest, those 
who betray a naive curiosity as to a stranger's 
name, place, occupation, the patient student is 
apt to discover an essential human soundness. 
With them intermarriage seems to have wrought 
little degeneration, physical or intellectual. 
They are sturdy folk, well limbed, well featured, 
at least of normal stature, quick, muscular, easy 
in their unstudied pose and movements, tanned 
to fiery red or deep warm brown by daily 
exposure to sun, wind, and the salt spume. The 
children, shy as young islanders are apt to be, 
have yet a frank gaze, and quickly responsive 
smile. The boys go barefoot from April to 
November, and wear simple ''two-piece" gar- 
ments, easily and instantly shed for a plunge 

210 



ISLANDS 



into salt water. On holidays young and old 
are well clad, and the island girls, who flock 
aboard the steamer from Baltimore when it 
reaches the local wharf, are gay in the latest 
fashions of girlhood everywhere. On the tongue 
of the islanders still linger archaic phrase and 
pronunciation, some probably to be assigned to 
their English county of origin. Words are 
short and simple, but sufficiently expressive for 
the plain purposes of the speakers, and talk, 
bristles with terms of the sea and its trades. 

Personal dignity of a simple, matter-of- 
course, unassertive sort is the outstanding mark 
of the islanders, giving to their manners a fine 
touch of man-to-man sincerity. With it goes 
the instinctive courtesy of the man at ease as 
to his own place in the scheme of things, sure of 
himself, not looking for slights, cheerfully ready 
to concede to others precisely what he expects 
on his own account. The islanders have their 
own quaint oaths and expletives, fit to their 
occasions, and used with emphasis and fluency ; 
but they are to the last degree careful of speech 
in the presence of women. Many of them have 
a surprising acquaintance with Hebrew and 
Christian Scriptures. 

Those who journey from New York to 
Washington by the Baltimore and Ohio Rail- 

211 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

road look down from the train upon the 
multitudinous, tossing tree-tops of a densely 
forested island, which may be called Number 
One of the Chesapeake's ten thousand. It lies 
mid-way the very mouth of the Susquehanna, 
where the river widens as in joyous abandon 
for its union with the bay. The railway bridge 
rests in mid-stream upon a stout pier deeply set 
in the island so conveniently placed. Travellers 
find mind and eyes distracted by the glorious 
views North and South suddenly opened up 
by this journey over the billowy tree-tops. 
Northward lies the ample breadth of the river, 
flowing swiftly with ruffled shallows between 
banks partly forested, partly cultivated. The 
East bank rises in the bold steep hills of Cecil 
county, wooded to the top, mimic mountains that 
roll Northward, one after another until lost in 
the blue distance of Pemisylvania, beyond the 
odd little river-and-hill town of Port Deposit, the 
farthest North of Eastern Shore ports. It 
has clung courageously to its steep hill-side, 
despite repeated Spring freshets of the stream 
that have placed its lower business district 
under water, and piled its streets with huge 
cakes of ice brought down by the frost-dammed 
river. On the West, the Harford county shores 
are gentler, with cultivated slopes in the fore- 

212 



ISLANDS 



ground, and wooded hills stretching Northward 
to Conowingo Bridge. The sudden splendid 
opening of the river view Northward is apt to 
distract the traveller's eyes from the scene 
Southward over the island, where spreads the 
sunny expanse of the Chesapeake, widening and 
widening to misty-dim shores on either hand. 
A few miles below the mouth of the Susque- 
hanna, and a little Westward of the Chesa- 
peake's middle line, lies Spesutia Island, 
named in memory of Colonel Nathaniel Utie, 
who made it his military base in 1659, when he 
was trying to bully the Dutch out of the Penin- 
sula. * ' Spes Utiae, ' ' he called it in Latin, ' ' The 
Hope of Utie." 

Greatest and loveliest of the Chesapeake 
Islands, and the earliest home of European 
civilization on the Eastern Shore, is Kent 
Island, which hugs the coast of Queen Anne's 
county eight or ten miles across the bay from 
Annapolis. A ferry of about three hours con- 
nects Kent Island with Baltimore, and in turn 
links itself to the mainland Eastward, by means 
of a railway traversing the island, whence it 
runs to Lewes and Rehoboth, touching at 
twenty villages and hamlets on the Eastern 
Shore and in Delaware. Historically Kent 
Island is one of the most interesting spots on 

213 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

the Peninsula. Here remain traces of the 
earthworks with which William Claiborne held 
off the attacks of Lord Baltimore, and here 
Claiborne built the very first Anglican Church 
on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. During 
the World War the island narrowly escaped 
depopulation that it might be made an artillery 
proving ground. Historic instinct and local 
loyalty barely saved the spot from this threat- 
ened outrage, and left it, let us hope, a perpetual 
monument to an interesting past. Many res- 
idents and some non-resident proprietors wished 
to sell out at the handsome terms expected of 
the Federal Government. 

A ruddy, year-round inhabitant of Kent 
Island, seated on his cottage piazza, well back 
from the bold bluff of the Chesapeake shore, 
and staring contentedly across to Annapolis, 
amid the silence of the closed bungalows of 
trivial summer residents all about him, spoke 
with smiling calm of the proposal after it had 
been defeated. Said he with an earnest eye, * ' If 
the Government really needs this place, the Gov- 
ernment ought to have it; if the Government 
merely wants this place, we shouldn't let the 
Government have it." 

The phrase was neat, and the tone and look 
of the speaker were sincere. He was not an 

214 



ISLANDS 



old inhabitant, for he had occupied his cottage 
only five years ; but he seemed to love his high- 
set home, with its inspiring prospect of sea and 
sky glimpsed through bordering trees. 

''We're 27 miles from Baltimore," said he, 
"with two mails and two boats a day, and with 
a good shell road to an auto garage. There's 
delicious bathing right down at the foot of the 
bluff; and I can pull out to that purse net 
whenever I choose, and get as many fish as 
we need. Then I have that view. This is a 
pretty good place to stay," he added before he 
repeated liis epigrammatical formula. 

William Claiborne is the bete noire of Mary- 
landers, early and late, but admired of Vir- 
ginians. Virginia was jealous of the Calvert 
Palatinate, as a bit carved out of what the 
Old Dominion regarded as her patrimony. 
Claiborne, a member of the Virginia Council, and 
sometime ''Secretary of State for the Kingdom 
of Virginia," obtained important rights of trad- 
ing in the New World, and made Kent Island a 
trading station, where in 1631 he had goods from 
a London house to exchange with the Indians 
for peltries. He must have visited the island 
frequently, though his residence was down and 
across the Chesapeake in Virginia. The Cal- 
verts in 1634 tried to treat mth liim for a 

215 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

peaceable understanding, but he held out for 
possession of Kent Island under the phrase of 
the Calvert patent, ^'hactenus inculta.^^ 

At last they and he had a small naval battle 
in Pocomoke River, in which there were fatal- 
ities, and prisoners, and Claiborne's party was 
worsted. This fight followed the seizure of a 
trading vessel of Claiborne's by the Calverts. 
Claiborne's London partners eventually recog- 
nized the Calvert claim as just; but Claiborne 
off and on resisted it, and joined with a dis- 
affected Marylander to seize the Palatinate, 
which he held and harried for two years. Later 
came his official commission from Cromwell to 
subdue the Maryland royalists, and later still his 
loss of influence with the British Government. 

Claiborne was one of those adventurous 
younger sons of good English families who tried 
to carve out great landed estates for themselves 
in America. The type has persisted to this day 
in English colonies, and Claiborne seems to have 
been a sort of lesser and cruder colonial Cecil 
Rhodes. He is represented in tradition as a man 
of great physical strength, and courage, who laid 
the rod with his own hands upon the backs of 
those who would not do his will, even in one 
instance upon the back of an Indian chief. 
Herrman was a Claiborne of greater vision, 

216 



ISLANDS 



stronger sense of social duty, and possibly nicer 
conscience, though withal he cut a smaller 
figure in colonial affairs. 

Among the 2500 inhabitants of Kent Island 
are some who claim descent from William 
Claiborne; and scattered over the island are 
farm houses closely copied from those of 
Seventeenth Century England. A family claim- 
ing descent on the one side from Claiborne, on 
the other from the Gallatins, has preserved an 
Eighteenth Century ancestor's record of game 
shot on the Island and its surrounding waters, 
an amazing tale, wliich proves how rich the 
region was in geese, ducks, swan, and the wild 
creatures of wood and field. Fish and fowl are 
still relatively abundant, but most of Kent Island 
has long been under cultivation, and its wheat 
crop has been locally famous for more than 
half a century. Its remaining forests are rich 
in huge hard wood trees, its pastoral scenes are 
charmingly peaceful, and its fleet of fishing 
craft lends a lively picturesqueness to its waters 
morning and evening. Hard by is the Miles 
River of the Eastern Shore, famous for fine 
old homesteads, and just across the bay in full 
view open up the Severn and South Rivers. 

Kent Island has not been careful of its 
antiquities. The long earthwork, running for 

217 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

miles from deep water to deep water across the 
Southern part of the island, and defended 
with success against the attacks of Lord 
Baltimore by land and sea, has crumbled 
in two centuries and three-quarters to a 
low, irregular mound, partly under cultiva- 
tion, though still to be traced at many places. 
The last brick of the oldest church in the island, 
was removed to help build a new church else- 
where, though the rector prayed that a 
monument of some sort, made of the actual 
material in the old building, be left with a 
suitable inscription to show that Claiborne had 
set up a place of worsliip here. Kent Island 
deserves memorial at the hands not only of the 
Anglican Church, but of equal suffragists, for 
here lived once Margaret Brent, that amazing 
and gigantic woman of the mid-Seventeenth 
Century, who boldly asserted her right to sit 
in the Assembly of the Palatinate. 

After somewhat more than an hour's run 
from Crisfield, the busiest little port of the 
Eastern Shore, the steamboat from Baltimore 
touches in the grayed rose and gold of dawn at 
a lone wharf on a tiny sand-spit almost in mid- 
Chesapeake. At times many passengers and 
some tons of freight are landed upon this lone, 
bare spot, and a dozen or perhaps a score of 

218 



ISLANDS 



small craft are moored to its spiles or seen 
hastening across the bay from the Westward. 
A mile-and-a-half distant, and almost exactly 
half way between the two shores, a long, 
irregular mass of foliage is dimly outlined 
against the horizon. That mass of foliage is 
Tangier Island, and the lone sand-spit is its 
harbor, the Callao to this Lima of the Chesa- 
peake. Tangier Island is so surrounded by 
shoals that no vessel of considerable draft can 
approach its shores ; but nevertheless, the island 
is busy^ prosperous, and populous, as it has been 
for the better part of three centuries. No doubt 
Tangier, like many another island of the 
Chesapeake, owes its early civilization to the 
simple fact that many hardy folk of the Seven- 
teenth Century, finding eligible sites on the 
mainland preempted by earlier comers, pre- 
ferred the severe life of fishermen, with the free 
natural opportunities of the world's richest 
waters, to the condition of renters, or farm 
laborers, or even farm owners in the back 
country, far from the desirable ''water situa- 
tions" beloved of all Eastern Shore folk. 
"Whatever the reason for the choice of the 
islanders, they chose wisely for an energetic 
race loving freedom and fearless of hardship. 
According to tradition the original settlers 

219 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

bought the island of the Indians for a trifle. 
If so they made a good bargain. 

When the stranger lands from the bugeye, 
canoe, or other light-draft vessel that carries 
him from Tangier's harbor to Tangier itself, 
he finds a path or lane, wide enough for five or 
six persons abreast, and nearly a mile long, 
running between 'the whitewashed fences on 
either hand of many specklessly neat little 
houses. This is the main street of the island; 
these are the homes of Tangier's two thousand 
inhabitants. There are five or six stores, truly 
so named, for the merchants of Tangier lay in 
considerable stocks of miscellaneous goods; 
there are neat and sufficient schoolhouses, and 
a considerable Methodist Church without archi- 
tectural pretentions. Each store has its porch 
with benches upon wliich the men of the island 
gather on warm or mild nights to discuss the 
news of the day, with possibly now and then a 
bit of local gossip, while the women are busied 
after their own fashion in the brightly lighted 
village homes. Sometimes a man reads aloud 
the news of the great outside world to a crowd 
of interested listeners. 

Tangier's wheeled vehicles are mostly wheel- 
barrows, and boats serve for local transporta- 
tion, for many of the houses have a tidal canal 

220 



^:^r^ 




DIP-WELL ON CHINCOTEAGUE 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

bedroom with a pleasant outlook seaward, and 
fed on the best that Tangier affords. At supper 
he has oysters raw, fried, stewed, and perhaps 
in some other form, corn-bread or hot cakes, 
the vegetables of the season, crabs, apple pie, 
native ripe figs, stewed and served with cream. 
Other meals are equally abundant, and a "help- 
ing" is never scanted. 

Some years ago the postmaster rendered to 
the community an essential service that should 
not be forgotten. A stranger with tongue glib 
as glass came offering stock in a gold mine, 
apparently like Brer Rabbit's, "one wot I made 
myse 'f . ' ' Alarmed at the hypnotic effect of the 
stranger's eloquence, the postmaster consulted 
a lawyer on the mainland, and came home with 
the wise advice to beware of that particular 
Pharisee's leaven. "If the gold mine was so 
promising a thing as the promoter preached it 
to be," said the lawyer in effect, "he would not 
have to come to Tangier to sell stock." When 
the postmaster had laid this argument before 
a few local leaders, it was decided that the 
promoter should be allowed three hours to leave 
Tangier forever, and he took his departure by 
the next boat to Baltimore. 

During a recent severe winter, Tangier was 
cut off from the outside world for many weeks, 

222 



ISLANDS 



without communication by boat, by mail, by 
telephone or by telegraph. The isolation was 
complete, except that a few adventurous spirits, 
apprized by signals from Watt's island hard by 
that the hermit from Jersey City who lived 
there was in distress, managed to reach his 
hermitage and fetch him to comfort and safety. 
A travelling salesman who reached Tangier at 
the opening of navigation late in February 
found that the islanders had suffered no serious 
inconvenience by their sudden reversion to 
Seventeenth Century conditions. They had 
plenty of money, food was abundant, and the 
merchants had driven a lively trade. The sick 
were well attended, for the island employs a 
doctor at public expense to serve all inhab- 
itants, and the post is sought by young graduates 
in medicine, as offering for a few years the 
chance of a general experience. 

Religion is taken seriously at Tangier, and 
most of the inhabitants are Methodists. Henry 
A. Wise has described with much charm a camp 
meeting on the island in the spring of 1828. The 
Bible is by far the most popular book with the 
islanders, and they have an acute critical taste 
in preaching. Until recently a local law required 
all residents to attend church on Sunday. The 
policeman a few years ago, finding a boy idling 

223 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

in front of his home when he should have been 
at church, reproved him, and when the sinner 
declined to obey the Sunday law, the policeman 
shot him. ; For this severe method) with an 
unrepentant sinner the zealous officer was tried, 
convicted, and sentenced to jail. Tangier 
acquired an unwelcome notoriety because of the 
occurrence, and it is said that the islanders are 
now apt to expel any stranger too freely using a 
camera when he visits there. The Sunday law 
has been modified, but it is still bad form to stay 
away from church. The postmaster has not 
missed Sunday School in more than half 
a century. 

Many other islands exibit conditions some- 
what similar to those of Tangier, but most of 
them are not so isolated by shallows, and many 
are near enough the mainland to be connected 
with it by bridge. Tilghman's Island, Hooper's 
Island, Deal's Island, Saxi's Island, are some 
of the better known places visited by the steam- 
boats from Baltimore; but there are many 
others inhabited by fishermen, and having a 
local trade in fish, fresh or packed; on most 
there are gardens, churches, schools, and on not 
a single one is there poverty or squalor. Public 
sentiment is strong for order in these island 
communities; and in those considerably in- 

224 



ISLANDS 



habited there is an effective religious sentiment 
that helps to care for public morals. 

Of the many score islands thickly fringing 
the Eastern Shore counties of Virginia, the most 
interesting and populous is Chincoteague, lying 
on the Atlantic coast just below the Maryland 
line, and for most of its own coast protected 
from the surges of the ocean by the end of the 
outlying peninsula of Assateague. Chinco- 
teague (the name is locally pronounced Jink- 
atig) is reached from the railway terminus at 
Franklin City, named for a former Judge of 
Worcester County, by little steamers that run 
in forty minutes seven miles across the shallows 
of Chincoteague Sound. A bridge has recently 
been opened to connect the island with the main- 
land of Accomack, so that the islanders now 
have direct communication by means of a broad 
highway with the New York, Philadelphia, and 
Norfolk Railway, and an outlet North and South 
by fast freight and passenger trains for them- 
selves and their products. The bridge, which 
is really a chain of bridges alternating with 
solid causeways, straddles the shallows of 
Chincoteague Sound for about four miles. Its 
builder was Captain John Whealton, a native 
islander, who has done like things in Florida. 
There is a plan for connecting Chincoteague 

15 225 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

by bridge with Assateagiie. In shape the island 
bears a crude likeness to a humpback 
whale, with its head pointed North-eastward 
toward the Maryland line, its hump turned 
toward Assateague. 

The stranger landing on Chincoteague is 
struck at once with the glitter and sparkle of 
everything in sight. Its swarm of little boats 
bow and toss to the wavelets breaking in myriad 
mirrors all over the land-locked harbor, and its 
pebbles seem polished especially to do honor to 
the guest. What the dazzled eyes of the stranger 
make out as most striking when he is once 
ashore, is the well-paved main street lighted by 
electricity, and stretching for more than a mile 
along the water front. Thickly seated along 
this street are simple and comfortable homes, 
most of them small, some of them rather large, 
none of architectural distinction, and a number 
of business buildings, mostly of wood. Auto- 
mobiles move up and down the street, and at 
busy corners stands a mechanical traffic regu- 
lator. Everywhere are the signs of an active 
and intelligent community, and of course there 
is a blazing, blaring "movie" theatre. 

Cliincoteague is about eight miles long, and 
at no point quite two miles wide, with a total area 
of perhaps six thousand acres. It has a pop- 

226 



ISLANDS 



Illation of four thousand, and a soil that yields 
food for considerably less than a tenth of that 
number; yet poverty is unknown, and all are 
not only abundantly fed, but comfortably 
housed and fitly clothed. There are many 
churches, and ample school houses for all the 
children, of whom there is a great number, 
for race suicide is not Chincoteague's favorite 
crime. The general prosperity of the island is 
due to the presence of a hardy and industrious 
race living amid waters rich in oysters, and 
a great variety of fish ; and to the wise laws of 
Virginia permitting any citizen to catch oysters 
on the natural beds or ''rocks", as the local 
term is, on payment of a license fee proportioned 
to the size of the boat and the kind of tools used, 
and forbidding anyone to make private prop- 
erty of such deposits. The result of these con- 
ditions, of course, is that no able-bodied man of 
average energy and personal initiative will 
work ashore for much less than he may hope to 
earn as a self-employed oysterman, ''crabber" 
or fisherman. Chincoteague has justices of the 
peace and two or three policemen; but the 
machinery of public order is not overworked, 
because crime is rare, and the community is in 
the main self -regulative. 

Half a dozen streets penetrate the interior 

227 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

from the main highway, but gradually fade 
out in the sand or end in marshy ponds. A 
central bit of mingled pine and hardwood forest 
is traversed by natural aisles through which 
the sea winds sweep in solemen anthem, and 
where flourish a breed of small and singularly 
blood-thirsty mosquitoes. Thickets surround 
the interior ponds, and here the mocking-bird 
nests and sings. A flowering cactus grows in 
the dryest sands, and the island is rich in many 
blooming wild plants unfamiliar to regions 
farther North. Scattered through the interior 
are comfortable little homes of the fishermen, 
swarming with children, and gay with blooming 
dooryards. Here and there, the well-sweep sur- 
vives and even the long-handled dipping bucket. 
At the Northern extremity of the island is the 
old graveyard associated with the early past of 
Chincoteague. Here are graves marked with 
the figure-heads of wrecked ships, and the 
spot has a melancholy charm by reason of 
great trees, played upon day and night by the 
Atlantic winds. 

Chincoteague has long been famous for its 
race of half-wild ponies, pastured the year 
round upon the wind-swept prairies at the 
Southern end of the island, and many of them 
upon the ever green interior glades. Jennings 

228 



ISLANDS 



Cropper Wise, says in liis fascinating *' Early 
History of the Eastern Shore of Virginia," 
that Chincoteague ''was first prospected and 
granted to one of the colonists in 1670 by James 
II, " a patent typographical blunder, for James 
did not come to the throne until 1685. The 
island must have been peopled in some measure 
by wliites before 1670, for it was an attractive 
spot easily reached from the mainland, and off- 
ering much in its own soil and in the natural 
opportunities of its surrounding waters. Mr. 
Wise rejects a popular notion that the ponies 
were found upon the island by the earliest white 
settlerSy though horses may have reached 
Chincoteague before 1670; for Mr. Wise him- 
self notes that the first horse was brought to 
the Eastern Shore in 1642, and that horses 
turned loose to breed upon the salt meadows 
became such a nuisance that the settlers by 
agreement fenced them upon "necks" so that 
they should not destroy crops. As the ponies 
are excellent swimmers, some may have escaped 
to Chincoteague from outlying necks, or set- 
tlers of the mainland may have placed horses on 
the island for breeding purposes. Whatever 
the origin of the ponies, they are fine, hardy, 
well formed, and easily tamed little animals, 
larger than most European ponies, and, indeed, 

229 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

rather to be regarded as small horses than of 
the pony type. The colts at pasture are un- 
kempt little beasts, but a few months of brush 
and curry-comb will fetch them to a satiny 
smootlmess. Once a year in August they are 
rounded up, and branded, a ceremony known as 
*Hhe pony penning," when many of the ponies 
are sold at auction. 

From Assateague Light, a nobly rigid tall 
shaft of masonry, one sees a great number 
of the ponies pasturing upon Chincoteague and 
upon the fields that border the shores of As- 
sateague itself. This densely wooded, narrow 
peninsula is spread map-like beneath the eyes 
of the beholder at the top of the lighthouse ; and 
from that high perch upon fair days one seems 
to be ringed with the richly azure sea, and 
roofed as with a vast bell-glass of like color. 
The troubled Atlantic rolls in wliite furrows of 
foam where the breakers play upon the shoals, 
and great areas of the sea's bottom are lit to 
golden yellow as the sun strikes through the 
shallows. Ponies stand knee-deep in the warm 
surf, or move in and out of the forests pene- 
trated by the paths that they have made in their 
wanderings of many generations. 



CHAPTER XV 
OCCUPATIONS 



AGRICULTURE, fishing, shipbuilding, and 
. water-borne commerce were the basic in- 
dustries of the Peninsula from early colonial 
times, as they are still outside the few con- 
siderable cities. Village communities have 
grown up mainly to minister to the needs of 
those engaged in the basic industries, though 
many such communities, especially those sit- 
uated upon na\dgable streams or inlets, have 
nursed metropolitan ambitions. Wilmington 
grew rather early into a manufacturing com- 
munity and important market town. Some vil- 
lages with water-power, set up in the late 
Eighteenth Century mills for the weaving of 
cloth, and for other purposes. The Dutch, of 
course, set up windmills, and the Swedes before 
them had milled corn and wheat. When the col- 
onists of the Peninsula had overcome the early 
hardships of life in a raw land, they found 
themselves, as American colonists elsewhere, in 
an economic condition that Europe had not 
known for many centuries. Land, under wliich 

231 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

" I 

term political economists include not merely 
arable soil, but all natural opportunities — min- 
eral deposits, water-power, fishing shores — was 
so abundant as to be free to all ; but labor and 
capital — tools, machinery, metallic currency — 
were scarce. Naturally enough, therefore, wages, 
although low as measured in money, were high 
as measured in the ordinary products of labor 
such as could be wrung from the soil. In other 
words, every able-bodied man was sure of a 
simple living from the work of his hands, and 
there was no such thing as unemployment. 
Consequently any man of energ}'' or the slight- 
est personal initiative preferred to be self-em- 
ploying as farmer, fisherman, hunter, sailor, to 
serving an employer at less than a living wage. 
Every man might reasonably hope not merely to 
own land, and be independent of employers, but 
eventually to become a capitalist, great or small. 
The result of this condition was to make us 
the most inventive people in the world. It also 
made us slave-holders. Our inventive genius 
was early directed toward the contriving of 
labor economies, whether in the form of tools 
and machines or in that of labor-saving pro- 
cesses. Labor was necessary to produce wealth, 
to wring from the soil, food, clothing, shelter, 
and to create capital by which all such things 

232 




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OCCUPATIONS 



could be more cheaply produced. As all owned 
land or hoped to own that and capital as well, it 
was to the interest of all to save that precious 
necessity, ''labor," by the use of tools, machin- 
ery, ingenious processes, any kind of short-cut. 
Everybody wished to save his own labor, if he 
were a self -employing person, or that of hired 
workers, were he an employer of others. A few 
colonists brought over with them hired servants ; 
but the energetic among these naturally took to 
the land, or the water, and became self- 
employed. So too, ' ' redempti oners, ' ' after they 
had worked out the "time" sold to those who 
paid for their passage, joined the self-employ- 
ing class. 

It was so hard to create a permanent serving 
class, that the colonists yielded to the tempta- 
tion and set up the institution of slavery. The 
Indians did not prove good material out of 
which to make slaves. They accordingly soon 
became ''the white man's burden;" and the 
white man, preferring to carry his burden as 
dead weight, slew the Indians. The African was 
brought over as the white man's burden-bearer; 
and poetic justice, eventually fixed him on the 
back of the white man, as a burden that clogged 
the progress of slave-holding communities. 
Climatic conditiooas, the quick and quickening 

233 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

conscience of the Quakers, and some less impor- 
tant considerations early freed the Northern 
slaves. Then the North found the swarming, 
cheap immigrant labor from Europe, at first 
mainly voluntary, later stimulated by advertis- 
ing and even brought over under contract, a 
pretty effective substitute for slavery, economi- 
cally considered, indeed, more profitable than 
slavery, and morally not so offensive to public 
conscience. On the Peninsula, unfortunately, 
African slavery persisted and increased for 
more than two centuries, though in parts of 
the region it died a languishing death. 

Coming to the Peninsula with European 
preconceptions, the colonists were above all else 
land-hungry. Younger sons in England, disin- 
herited of the soil by entail and primogeniture, 
saw their opportunity here to rival their elder 
brothers as landed gentlemen. Men of strong 
initiative and bold native ambition sought to be 
great landlords. Where the forms of feudality 
were set up, as in Maryland, such men sought 
lordships and vast manorial holdings upon 
feudal tenure. Luckily for the relatively late 
comers, who found the best sites preempted, 
the waters were free ; and thousands instead of 
renting of the great landlords, serving as their 
hired men, or settling in the **back country," 

234 



OCCUPATIONS 



took to the islands as fishermen, or lived in water- 
side hamlets as free, skilled mechanics, fish- 
ing perhaps if time served. Throughout the 
whole colonial period and ever since, the free 
natural opportunities of the immensely rich 
waters have been the resource of independent 
spirits, the means of establishing a natural min- 
imum wage for able-bodied men.^ 

After the Peninsula of the colonial period 
had learned the economic futility of making 
tobacco almost the sole crop for export, agri- 
culture was varied, and in time came the ''five 
field system" of culture. As the cities of the 
Atlantic slope grew and communications were 
improved, the culture of vegetables and small 
fruits for the urban markets began to be an 
important industry. Large crops, however, 
were preferred, and such the farmers of the 
Peninsula grew long after much of the soil was 



* In many colonies, as for instance, at Plymouth, com- 
munal land-holding was tried in the midst of the early 
hardships, but abandoned as deadening to personal initiative, 
when the danger of starvation or of massacre by the savages 
had passed. The colonists, with their European precon- 
ceptions, naturally lost the precious opportunity to establish 
justice by taxing site-values for public revenue. New-comers, 
whether immigrants or children born on the soil, therefore, 
found the best sites preempted, and had to serve others for 
wages, or go to regions less early settled, and the outlying 
lands on the edge of established settlements. 

23d 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

unsuitable for competition with the virgin 
West in the growing of wheat and corn. 

The peach craze reached Delaware in the dec- 
ade before the Civil War, and spread over a 
large part of the Peninsula. When disease 
attacked the trees in upper and middle New 
Castle county, where the peach was first 
commercially grown upon a large scale, the 
''peach belt" moved slowly Southward on the 
Peninsula. Men who had bought land in large 
areas at Civil War prices, and planted thou- 
sands upon thousands of peach trees, were 
ruined between the peach disease, competition 
from peach-growers in other parts of the Penin- 
sula and in New Jersey, and the contraction of 
the currency that came with the return to specie 
payments in 1879. Some such, after paying 
interest on borrowed capital for eight or ten 
years, saw their lands sold for less than the face 
of their mortgage; and not a few accepted 
the greenback heresy. Apple growing by 
modern methods and for commercial purposes 
came a generation after the peach blight, and 
in the course of twenty years proved highly 
profitable^ 

Packeries for tomatoes, other vegetables, 

^ Delaware has 548 apple trees to the square mile, nearly 
double the number of any other state. U. 8. Dept. Agricul- 
ture Bulletin. 

236 



OCCUPATIONS 



small fruits, oysters, fish, crabs, became im- 
portant industries in many parts of the Penin- 
sula. '^ Company farming" has also taken a 
foothold on the Peninsula, an industrial and 
social development that needs intelligent scru- 
tiny. Fortunately for the farmers of the Penin- 
sula, the Agricultural Department of the Uni- 
versity of Delaware, and the Agricultural 
Experiment Station of Maryland are alert to 
the possibilities of new and profitable crops, and 
intelligent guardians of the industry. "Book- 
farming" is no longer despised or suspected. 

Wilmington has been for many years a ship- 
building city, and almost every river town on 
the Peninsula has or has had its shipyard. The 
best carpenters in much of the Eastern Shore 
are usually also skilled shipwrights. Some of 
these men have shown taste and invention in 
marine architecture, and have developed new 
types of craft adapted to local needs. Stout 
canoes are still made of hollowed logs, though 
not of a single hollowed log from a giant tree. 
The bugeye is still a popular fishing boat, some- 
times of considerable size, and staunch in all 
weathers, though the skipjack, a comparatively 
recent model, is now the favorite larger Chesa- 
peake fishing craft. The dory, with high stem 
and bow, much used by the fishermen of the 

237 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

Potomac, where the width of the river is such 
that smaller and lighter craft do not so well 
endure the high seas in rough weather, is less 
often seen in the Eastern Shore rivers. Most 
fishing craft now have auxiliary power, and 
many swift and rather large boats driven solely 
by gasoline or steam are used in the fisheries. 
The greatest industry of the two bays is 
oystering.2 ji jg important in Delaware Bay, 
essential above all other industries in the Chesa- 
peake and its tributaries, and in the Atlantic 
waters of Accomack and Northampton, espe- 
cially in th^ shallows about Chincoteague Island. 
Oystering in the Maryland waters lost some- 
thing of its picturesque, not to say its heroic, 
aspect when Thomas Conte Bowie Howard gave 
up his place and rank as Commodore of the 
Oyster Navy to administer a Chesapeake ferry 
and develop an Eastern Shore farm. Captain 
Howard, as the Commodore was commonly 
called, loomed large and authoritative on the 

•There was a time when the relatively high wages in 
the tidal basin of the Chesapeake caused by the freedom 
of access to the natural opportunities of the waters led to 
the "shanghaing" of men in Baltimore to recruit the crews 
of the larger oystering vessels. At the worst this system 
approached a sort of winter-long slavery for the men thus 
recruited in lieu of local laborers, who could not be had at 
lower wages than their earnings as self-employed oystermen. 
Penal law and changing conditions ended the abuse. 

238 




FARM HOUSE, WHITE CLAY CREEK VALLEY 




SKIPJACK UNDER SAIL 




A FEW THOUSAND BASKETS OF TOMATOES 




LADEN OYSTER BOATS AT CEISFIEI.D 



OCCUPATIONS 



upper deck of liis powerful tug, with its rack of 
polished rifles in the cabin, and its lean, jacketed 
one-pounder in the bow, and looked the thing 
he was, the suave, but firm and judicial master 
of the Chesapeake. When he emerged from the 
mouth of the Choptank on an October morning, 
and approached the oyster grounds of Tangier 
Sound, the horizon Northward looked like a 
country cemetery, so closely serrated was it with 
the silhouetted wliite sails of the oyster boats. 

From his post in front of the pilot house Cap- 
tain Howard surveyed the scene appraisingly 
as his vessel neared the fleet. When his quick 
eye failed to detect upon the mainsail of any 
craft the license number in large black Arabic 
numerals, he hailed the offending ship-master 
with the mildly pertinent inquiry, "Cap'n, 
Where's your license number?" As the delin- 
quent sought to explain and temporize. Captain 
Howard listened with respectful attention, just 
as if he had not heard such a tale a thousand 
times before; but likewise, as also a thousand 
times before, the end of the colloquy was a polite 
but peremptory order to up-anchor and be off, an 
order obeyed promptly and without grumbling. 

Cruising for a few miles up and down the 
bay. Captain Howard would now and again send 
out his subordinate officers in a launch to fetch 

239 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

in oystermen caught violating any provision of 
the somewhat detailed code ; and he was apt to 
make for a convenient harbor, sometimes in 
the Potomac, with three or four delinquents in 
tow. Once at the wharf, he would send ashore 
for the nearest justice-of-the-peace, hold court 
in his cabin, acting in the double capacity of 
prosecutor and *' assessor," and administer 
summary justice then and there, usually in the 
form of fines. The Virginians did say that 
Captain Howard in moments of zeal sometimes 
tried them in Maryland for offenses com- 
mitted in the waters of Virginia; but perhaps 
such tales were the slanderous inventions of 
conscious sinners. 

Evening often found Captain Howard steam- 
ing into the chief harbor of Coan River, a 
tributary of the lower Potomac ; and before and 
after bin; snowed in under press of canvas 
hundreds of the oyster fleet. In the rich after- 
glow of an old rose sunset, shot through with 
the delicious ethereal whiteness shed by a great 
moon new-risen, the winged craft sought their 
anchorage. Then through the deepening peace 
of twilight, as it wore toward the luminous night, 
from the laggards of the fleet there floated the 
pleasant sounds of sails slatting downward, of 
dropping anchor chains, of oars gently dipped 

240 



OCCUPATIONS 



and responsive oar-locks, of echoing calls from 
boat to boat, of voice in song, of flute or mere 
accordion on the deck of some dim-descried 
craft; and all these mingled with the playful 
barking of dogs, and the laughter of children 
ashore. Then came the final serenity of the 
moonlit night, accentuated rather than disturbed 
by the baying of watch dogs, or the crowing of 
cocks that answered far inland from roost to 
roost, with no sign of life in the little harbor 
save the hint conveyed by the riding lights of 
all those serried ships, or the belated hail of a 
tender returning with supplies from the vil- 
lage store. Rocked by a gentle heave of the 
moonlit tide beneath a windless sky, a thousand 
weary men slept snug in their narrow berths, 
until the gray and rose of early dawn 
streaked the East far across the broad bosom 
of the Chesapeake, calling the crews to a new 
day of labor. 

The shad fisheries of both bays are impor- 
tant, and that of Delaware Bay and its great 
river has the quaint history of a century-long 
contest between New Jersey and Delaware as to 
rights and jurisdictions. Delaware long claimed 
that the Northern arc rightfully extended across 
the river and gave her exclusive privileges as 
to fishing within that sector, through the whole 

16 241 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

width of the river up to mean tide on the Jersey- 
shore. Both bays are fished also for herring, 
and a great variety of larger food fish, as also 
menhaden to be turned into fertilizer; for the 
Peninsula is in some sense the gift of the sea, 
as to food actual and potential. The pound nets 
of the Eastern Shore fishermen extend for 
miles along the edge of the navigable channel 
in the bay itself and in its innumerable tribu- 
taries. Before the era of power boats and 
auxiliary engines, nets were tended in long 
craft, driven by huge sweeps in the hands of 
stout negroes. The business has lost charm, 
but gained efficiency, by the prosaic substitution 
of gasoline for human muscles. 

Wilmington's industries include two that 
have long been peculiarly her own, leather, 
especially morocco, and explosives. The former 
gave the city its first very rich man. Colonel 
Henry C. McComb, whose wealth seems trivial 
compared with that provided for many Wil- 
mingtonians by the second industry. Pierre 
Samuel Du Pont de Nemours, a pupil of the 
celebrated French chemist Lavoisier, and highly 
distinguished as statesman and man of letters, 
came to the United States in 1799, a few 
months before the death of George Washington, 
and won from Washington encouragement 



OCCUPATIONS 



to undertake the manufacture of gunpowder in 
this country. In 1802, before Du Pont had actu- 
ally taken up his residence here, the works 
were established on a small scale at Wilming- 
ton, with the countenance of the Federal Gov- 
ernment. Through most of the Nineteenth 
Century the business was not a great one, 
as tried by the standards of today; for almost 
forty years after the manufacture was founded 
the capital invested was less that $1,000,000, 
the number of emploj^es barely 500. The 
business expanded during the Mexican War; 
but shortly before the Civil War, the capital 
invested was less than $2,000,000; by 1870 
it was nearly $5,000,000. But for the Du 
Pont works, the Civil War might have been much 
prolonged. Before 1860 one of the Du Ponts 
had hit upon Chilean saltpetre as a substitute 
for the far costlier potassium nitrate in the 
manufacture of explosives, a discovery that 
revolutionized the 'business, for thereafter in 
time of peace the manufacture of blasting pow- 
ders for use in agriculture and other industries 
became far more important to the Du Ponts 
than the manufacture of warlike munitions. 
Although the family had long been popularly 
reputed of fabulous wealth, the whole capital 
invested in explosives in the United States at 

243 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

the opening of the present century was less than 
$8,500,000. It was not until the World War that 
Du Pont business expanded into the vast con- 
cern of recent times, although before that period 
the surplus capital of the company and of in- 
dividual members of the family had been 
diverted to undertakings unrelated to munitions 
or to explosives of any sort. As noted in the 
chapter on Wilmington, with the close of the 
great war, the company rapidly turned many of 
its munitions factories to the uses of peace, and 
as far as possible retained employes summoned 
from many occupations in the period of expan- 
sion, though of course the process of contraction 
necessarily squeezed out many from almost 
all ranks.^ 

*A member of the Du Pont family has recently written 
a valuable history of the company up to the great war. 
Some aspects of the Du Pont Company in its recent develop- 
ment are discussed in the chapter on Wilmington. 



CHAPTER XVI 
HUMORS OF LAW AND POLITICS 

AS this book is not controversial it makes 
no pretence to serious political history, 
whether of Delaware or of the Eastern Shore. 
The truth is that the author could not discuss 
the politics of his native state for the past gener- 
ation without offending now one party, now the 
other, and often both. As to the political his- 
tory of the Eastern Shore, that is part of 
Maryland's and Virginia's political history, a 
subject manifestly too large for the space that 
could be afforded politics in a volume of the 
scope and purpose herein undertaken. What 
is said of politics in this chapter, therefore, 
must be mainly by way of illustrating the tem- 
perament and attitude of folk on the Peninsula. 
Political feeling has been bitter on the Penin- 
sula and especially in Delaware since the 
enfranchisement of the colored people, and the 
consequent and natural solid support given by 
that race to one political party. In Delaware par- 
tisan bitterness was increased by an assessment 
law intended to exclude by indirection a con- 

245 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

siderable part of the colored voters from the 
polls, a law futile in the end for the purposes 
of the enacting party. The use of money to 
corrupt voters, an old abuse, grew at length into 
a gross public scandal throughout much of Dela- 
ware; and the merciless misuse of the spoils 
system almost throughout the Peninsula tended 
to debase public morals and ideals. There are, 
however, bright spots in the political history 
of the Peninsula, and it has given at least its 
full share of distinguished public men to the 
local area and to the nation. Undeniably also, 
some of the darker phases of politics have been 
lightened by the play of a rough tolerant humor 
characteristic of these communities. 

Locally famous names, some of national 
importance, long had determining weight in 
party councils and at the polls. Perhaps this 
was and still is peculiarly true of Accomack and 
Northampton, though the Eastern Shore of 
Maryland has also delighted to honor men of 
personal and ancestral distinction. Delaware 
was long proud of her weight in the United 
States Senate, of the places held by her citizens 
in the President's cabinet, and upon the Federal 
bench. The judiciary of the State, appointive, 
and until somewhat recently of life tenure, also 
attracted men of ability and character. No 

246 



HUMORS OF LAW AND POLITICS 

doubt the bench was at times a convenient 
shelving place for men who might have been 
troublesome in politics, and, to vary the figure, 
sometimes a consolation purse for those dis- 
tanced in the race for political honors ; but the 
judiciary has held the respect of the bar and 
the people. Indeed the judiciary of the whole 
Peninsula has profited by the popular heritage 
of the traditional English respect amounting 
to veneration for the ofiice and title of judge. 

In Delaware the higher political places were 
once left by a sort of tacit understanding to the 
competition of leaders respected for education 
and name, minor ofiices to the rough scramble 
of local politicians. The ''county offices" in 
Delaware, closely related to the courts, paid by 
fees and filled by appointment of the Gov- 
ernor, were greatly sought, and made a source 
of party funds. So, too, the elective sheriff, 
whose fees in New Castle county amounted to 
many thousand dollars a year, was a consider- 
able contributor to the same funds, and the office 
tended to become the resort of financially em- 
barrassed men, who sometimes retrieved their 
fortunes in a single term. ''Rotation in office" 
was a favorite doctrine, which in practice came 
to mean a game of pussy-wants-a-corner. Old- 
timers flitted from one appointive place to an- 

247 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

— ' 

other, with now and then a luckless one left 
out in the cold workaday world, because some 
''new" man had managed to break into the 
magic ring. Such a system could not continue, 
and it gave way to one of salaried offices, with 
fees that went to the treasury. 

Under life tenure the bench in Delaware was 
at last occupied largely by white-haired veter- 
ans, so that when it was proposed to set up a 
home for aged men, the witty William T. 
Croasdale, said, ''Why, when we have the 
bench?" An aged justice taking his accustomed 
siesta one day to the soothing drone of a legal 
argument, suddenly woke with a start, 
violently beckoned a member of the bar, and 
whispered, "What in hell's before the Court?" 
The judicial term was finally limited, and the 
bench rejuvenated without the sacrifice of pop- 
ular respect for the judiciary ; though in a recent 
instance public opinion was shocked by the sus- 
picion of partisan abuse in appointments to 
the bench. 

Characteristic of Delaware's conservatism 
is the survival of the chancellorship as part of 
the judicial machinery. Delaware also has had 
its local case in chancery, a sort of Jarndyce vs 
Jarndyce, dragging on for two generations. 
After more than a half-century of litigation, 

248 



HUMORS OF LAW AND POLITICS 

during which time the just intentions of one 
chancellor after another were hampered, this 
case came under the eye of Chancellor Charles 
Minot Curtis, who recently retired at the close 
of a highly creditable term, bearing with him 
as a permanent personal decoration, the title 
''honorable," normally attaching to the office. 
The long delayed case received at his hands 
a successful administration such as conditions 
had made impossible to his predecessors. 

The case is a trust created under the will 
of Colonel Benjamin Potter, who died in 1843, 
leaving many hundred acres of land to be so 
administered that ithe proceeds should go to 
poor whites of Kent county not in the almshouse. 
The testator seems to have hoped that help in 
crises might save men from becoming permanent 
paupers. Chancellor Curtis learned that in 
consequence of litigation and of legislation prob- 
ably inspired by the litigants, the trust at the 
end of more than half a century had yielded only 
$750 to the intended beneficiaries, or less than 
$10 a year. Litigation and betterments had 
consumed most of the proceeds. Improved 
agricultural conditions and markets accompany- 
ing the World War changed the balance sheet 
of the trust, so that the net earnings for the 
four years ending in July, 1918 were about 

249 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

$5000 a year, and the property, more than once 
officially declared worthless, was valued at 
$100,000. Buildings were repaired, the testa- 
tor's neglected grave was fitly marked, the land 
was fertilized, the poor whites were helped, and 
a sum was invested in quickly realizable secur- 
ities as a guarantee of income against future 
contingencies. Retiring, Chancellor Curtis left 
the trust in wholesome condition, under the 
administration of a faithful and capable trustee. 

Delaware's criminal jurisprudence also re- 
tains a conspicuous mark of the native conserva- 
tism, for although the stocks disappeared long 
ago, and the pillory more recently, the whipping 
post survives. Delawareans are angrily sensi- 
tive to outside criticism of the whipping post, 
but growing sentiment at home will prob- 
ably rid the State of this antique machine. The 
whipping post is now stationed at the workhouse 
in New Castle county, where whippings are pri- 
vate. An attempt to restore this instrument of 
criminal justice to Kent and Sussex counties 
failed through the refusal of the Governor to 
sign a law to that effect. 

The bench and bar of the Eastern Shore are 
famous for interesting men and quaint stories ; 
and Accomack and Northampton in particular 
have a history of early criminal punishments 

250 



HUMORS OF LAW AND POLITICS 



intended to conserve private morals, that smack 
of Puritan Plymouth. Judge James Alfred 
Pearce of Chestertown, whose father was 
United States Senator, died recently leaving a 
grateful memory. EQs mother was a Laird of 
a Scotch-Irish family. The immigrant James 
Laird, son of an Ulster Protestant farmer and 
linen-bleacher, came to America near the mid- 
dle of the Eighteenth Century, and was twice 
married in Pennsylvania. His two sets of chil- 
dren, the men of whom were mostly lawyers or 
ministers of the gospel, became widely scat- 
tered over the Middle Western states and the 
border South. It is told of a Laird lawyer, who 
died young in Ohio, that he left a will with a 
provision running somewhat in this fashion : ''To 
that damned Yankee, Dr. Potter, a watch that 
I lost in Wheeling, if he can find it." Now the 
excellent Dr. Potter was the much loved and 
respected next-door neighbor of the testator's 
clerical brother-in-law. 

Judge William R. Martin of Talbot county, 
a native of Worcester, and colleague of 
Judge Pearce, had warm human sympathies and 
quick humorous perception. He liked to tell of 
his misadventures in buying a mare of a negro 
farmer. Pleased with the beast when he saw it 
in Easton, he drove out to the farmer's and tried 

251 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

to buy it, but thought the price too high. The 
owner was firm, and the Judge came home, only 
to be haunted by the memory of that mare. 
Twice more he visited the farmer, to find each 
time that his price had risen. Still honing for 
the mare, and perhaps recalling the tale of the 
Cumaean Sibyl and her books, he went once 
more to the farmer, and paid the yet further 
enhanced price, which was probably fifty per 
cent, more than he could have bought the animal 
for in the first instance. 

Judge Ara Spence had before him once in 
the court at Snowhiil a negro who was asked to 
plead to the charge of selling i contraband 
whiskey. ** 'Go's Ah's guilty," said the prisoner 
cheerfully. ''Tain't no use to say Ah ain't. De 
jedge dar, he knows All's guilty; fer didn' he 
come to dat kerridge house an' pay me good 
money fer a dipper full o' dat whiskey, an' didn* 
he say, 'Gabe, dats pooty good fer conter- 
band!" Without loss of gravity the Judge 
said: " Prisoner pleads guilty; $10 and costs." 
Then, turning to the Clerk of the Court, he 
added, *'Mr. Clerk, put this down against me." 

Strangers have found it hard to win the 
political affections of Delaware or the Eastern 
Shore. In fact Delaware long had in effect a 
political non-importation act. Not even the im- 

252 



HUMORS OF LAW AND POLITICS 

" ' " ' * 

pudent alien with money to burn conld quite 
have his own way as to high office; and the 
Thackerayan Irishman, John 'Byrne, with his 
equally Thackerayan family, and his not less 
Thackerayan newspaper, in spite of native hu- 
mor, an infectious smile, and popular eloquence 
enhanced by a rich brogue, gave up his attempt 
to win a seat in Congress, and shook the dust of 
Delaware from his shoes. Irving Handy came 
a stranger to Delaware, and went to Congress, 
thanks to an Eastern Shore paternal ancestry 
of high credit, the Kentucky Breckinridge blood 
on the maternal side, and his own native gifts. 
Both the Bayards and the Saulsburys, the 
former early Gallo-Dutch, the latter of old Vir- 
ginian and Eastern Shore ancestry, may be 
said to have "belonged" to Delaware from the 
beginning. As a matter of fact, the first James 
Asheton Bayard was a native of Philadelphia, 
but bom in 1767, when as yet Pennsylvania 
and Delaware were somewhat closely knit, or 
as Delawareans say in moments of expansive 
pride, when Pennsylvania was part of the older 
civilized community, Delaware. The Saulsburys 
reached NoTthumberland county, Virginia, in 
the famous Northern Neck, nursery of states- 
men, in 1645, where the immigrant acquired 
large land holdings, and brought over many 

253 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

colonists. His son John became the ancestor 
of the Delaware Sanlsburys, going to the East- 
ern Shore of Maryland, probably before 1679, 
whence in turn his son Andrew removed to lower 
Kent county, Delaware, before the partition of 
the Peninsula between the Penns and the 
Cal verts. Andrew's tract of four hundred acres 
has descended to the present AVillard Saulsbury. 

Three Bayards, father, son, and grandson, 
sat in the United States Senate after service in 
the House of Representatives. The family came 
to its fine flower in the person of the late 
Thomas F. Bayard, the third Senator. He 
served as Secretary of State in Mr. Cleveland's 
first cabinet, was our first envoy to the Court 
of St. James 's accredited with the rank of ambas- 
sador, and the favorite candidate for President 
with thousands of the most highly intellectual 
men in his own party, of not a few in the 
opposing party. 

Judge George Gray, who succeeded Mr. 
Bayard in the Senate, and carried on Dela- 
ware's best tradition in that body, would, it is 
believed, have been appointed to the Supreme 
bench, but that he was needed at his post as 
Senator. He helped to negotiate the treaty 
with Spain after our war with that country, and 
to settle the first great strike of coal miners. 

254 



HUMORS OF LAW AND POLITICS 

He now lives at Wilmington as retired Justice 
of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, hon- 
ored of all men, mthout distinction of party, a 
Delawarean of the best tradition, social, politi- 
cal, and professional. 

Much associated with both Ambassador 
Bayard and Judge Gray was a Kent countian, 
destined to reach the highest judicial honors 
attained by any Delawarean, Justice John 
Bassett Moore of the great world-court. He 
came to Wilmington at the age of twenty, fresh 
from the University of Virginia, and after three 
years was admitted to the bar, a pupil of George 
Gray. Those who knew the quiet, studious 
unpretentious young man of those days, have 
found him ever since quiet and unpretentious, 
throughout a career of high distinction in diffi- 
cult science, crowned at last with promotion 
to the great tribunal set up by mankind, in the 
hope that the men of the robe, rather than the 
men of the sword, shall have weight in the coun- 
cils of the nations. It is significant of Justice 
Moore's faith in the value of tradition that he 
moved that he and his fellows of the new court 
should wear the robe, and he will probably 
prove at least as democratic in essentials as 
the justice who objected to the symbol 
as undemocratic. 

255 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

Gassaway Watkins of McDonough, an inter- 
resting character of rural New Castle county, 
used to tell a story illustrating Thomas F. 
Bayard's sensitive hatred of political corrup- 
tion. ''Do you know, Tom," said Mr. Watkins, 
as he and the Senator drove along a dusty road 
in that quietly beautiful countryside, ' ' some of 
us thought we'd have to raise $10,000 to make 
sure of your election last time?" 

''Good heavens !" cried the Senator, "I hope 
you didn't do it!" The familiar "Tom" of 
Gassaway Watkins was the form of address 
from many older men of the party to Mr. Bayard, 
even to the end of his career, though no man 
in the United States held quite the place of 
something like veneration that he occupied in 
the regard of Delawareans, not merely of the 
rank and file, but of high ability and distinction. 
His proud answer when there were murmurs 
against him in the party was, "Home has no 
terrors for me !, " an utterance of a piece with 
his warning to some of his own party who wished 
to see him President, that spoilsmen must ex- 
pect little at his hands. 

Shortly before the Democratic National 
Convention of 1884, in which body Mr. Bayard 
developed considerable strength as a candidate, 
his friends were much disturbed at an interview 

256 



HUMORS OF LAW AND POLITICS 

with liim published by the New York Herald, 
because it contained some things that could not 
have sounded pleasant to Benjamin F. Butler, 
also a candidate for the Democratic nomination. 
As a matter of fact, Mr. Bayard, far from fear- 
ing that he had offended Butler, feared only 
that some things in the interview might be 
twisted, so as to make him appear as tolerant 
of Butlerism. When Mr. Bayard, in his mellow- 
ing age went abroad as ambassador to a land 
that he understood and loved, he was happy in 
the mission, but like Mr. Buchanan uneasy lest 
the expense of his public service should make 
serious inroads; upon his honorably small 
private fortune. 

Paralleling the succession of three Bayards 
in the United States Senate was the candidacy 
of the three Saulsbury brothers, Gove, Eli, and 
Willard, for a seat in that body. Eli won and 
long held the place. He was a tall, slender, 
austere old bachelor, of unswerving rectitude, 
public and private, but highly practical in his 
political methods, and without a gleam of Sena- 
tor Bayard's tenacious idealism. Gove had been 
Governor, and Willard, who had sat in the House 
of Representatives, where the youthful George 
Gray, looking down upon the assembled wisdom 
of that body from the gallery, thought that 

17 257 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

swarthy, vigorous Delawarean, with the burning 
eyes and rebellious hair, the very picture of a 
statesman, died as Chancellor. His son Willard, 
after long and patient service as leader of a 
minority, was sent to the United States Senate, 
Avhere he proved a capable aid to President 
Wilson, in times of stress, and amply won what 
was denied the senator — reelection. Visiting 
Denton to look after real estate, Willard 
Saulsbury learned how long are memories in 
Caroline county, for at dinner in the local hotel 
he heard through a window this dialogue 
between two natives outside: 

''Seen Senator Saulsbury in there?" 
''No; is that Senator Saulsbury?" 
"Yes; he's from Dover or Wilmington, I 
reckon." 

"It's a blamed lucky tiling for them Dela- 
ware Saulsbury s they moved out o' Maryland." 
John Middleton Clayton was the idol of 
the Whigs, especially in his native Sussex, where 
he was famed as a tanner and admired as a fid- 
dler, though to these accomplishments he added 
whatever a degree from Princeton and member- 
ship of the bar might have implied. Having nego- 
tiated the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, even to-day 
a subject of controversy, and seen it ratified by 
the Senate after a struggle in which he was bit- 

258 



HUMORS OF LAW AND POLITICS 

terly assailed, he resigned as Secretary of State, 
soon after President Taylor's death on July 9, 
1850. He returned to his quiet home below New 
Castle, wearied with public work ; but stung by 
continued attacks upon his treaty, he sought 
reelection to the United States Senate in the 
popular canvass of 1852. Knowing that the 
Legislature to meet in January, 1853, would have 
a Democratic majority of one in the Senate, so 
that it might be impossible in the absence of 
mandatory law requiring a joint session of the 
two houses to choose a Senator, to make effec- 
tive the large Whig majority of the House of 
Representatives, he nevertheless made a strong 
appeal for reelection that he might vindicate 
himself in the same body where he had been 
attacked, with the result that one Democratic 
Senator cast his vote for the joint session, and 
Clayton won his seat. A far more picturesque 
tale of the incident reports that Clayton won the 
election by his own eloquence, from an adverse 
Democratic majority, that he might help bring 
about the ratification of the treaty, pledging 
himself to resign when that was accomplished ; 
but Merris Taylor of Wilmington, a careful 
writer upon political themes, has investigated 
the question and found evidence for the story 
substantially as told above. The official records 

259 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

of Congress show that the treaty was transmit- 
ted to the Senate on May 22, 1850, and that 
ratifications were exchanged between the two 
governments on July 4 of the same year, 
while Clayton was still Secretary of State. 
Some encyclopsedias err in dating Clayton's 
reelection in 1851. 

Although Clayton served with distinction in 
the United States Senate for many years, and 
was once Chief Justice of the Delaware Courts, 
he had a homely simplicity that sometimes took 
surprising form. The late Henry Churchman 
of New Castle county was assigned the task as 
a boy of driving Mr. Clayton "down the State" 
as the familiar phrase has always been in the 
mouths of Delawareans. The boy was shy of 
his passenger, but after they had left urban 
civilization behind at Wilmington, Mr. Clayton 
drew off his "fine boots," put his feet on the 
dashboard, and said genially, "Now, Henry, 
we '11 be happy. ' ' After that incident the drive 
was a long exchange of easy talk between boy 
and man. 

A vanished political institution of Delaware 
was the Democratic County Meeting in the old 
Court House at New Castle. This meeting, all 
Democrats in good standing were privileged to 
attend, and there the humblest, it was assumed, 

260 



HUMORS OF LAW AND POLITICS 

might have his say. In practice, of course, the 
meeting was sldlfully managed by the politi- 
cians, who, like the watchers over Israel, neither 
slumber nor sleep. Nevertheless a thorn in the 
flesh to the little bosses was Sam Townsend of 
Appoquinimink hundred, a substantial and 
much respected farmer, the personal friend and 
almoner of his colored neighbors, but their un- 
compromising political opponent. William 
Herbert, a local politician of power, put the 
spoils system in a nutshell, when he complained : 
''The worst thing about Sam Townsend is that 
you can't shut him up, because he doesn't 
want anything." 

Sam, the most picturesque figure at the 
County Meeting, sat in the long-legged chair of 
the court crier, whose '*0h yes! Oh yes!" was 
heard year after year by those who never sus- 
pected it for disguised Norman French. High 
above the crowd of fellow Democrats loomed 
Sam Townsend, clad in fresh yellow Nankeen 
suit, and displaying a huge, rubicund, smooth- 
shaven face, and polished bald pate, with a col- 
ored handkerchief in one hand, a palmleaf fan in 
the other, both in frequent and vigorous use to 
assuage a plentiful perspiration, as he keenly 
watched the proceedings to detect and expose 
the machinations of the managers. One day 

261 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

when the figurehead put up for chairman of the 
meeting drew from his pocket a scrap of paper, 
and began reading the names of men whom he 
assumed to appoint to an important committee, 
Sam interrupted in a voice that reached all ears, 
and halted the timid chairman. ' ' Here ; none o ' 
that," cried Sam. "You can't name a committee 
from a bit o ' paper written out for you before- 
hand. The meeting'll name that committee!" 
That was enough, and the annoyed bosses looked 
on helpless while the man that "didn't want 
anything" had his way. 

At the opening of the Civil War, Sam 
Townsend, met amid a thirsty bar-room crowd 
at Dover, a travelling salesman from New Eng- 
land, and fell into debate with him upon the 
issues of the day. At last the New Englander, red 
with earnestness, exclaimed, "Sir, the mothers 
of New England, like the mothers of Greece, 
handing their sons their shields, will say, 'With 
it, my son, or upon it ! ' " Sam looked round, saw 
that the crowd was impressed, realized that for 
him the day was lost unless he answered effec- 
tively and instantly, and, his blue eyes sparkling 
Avith sudden inspiration, threw up his arms, 
crying : " I 'm done ! I 'm done ! When a man goes 
to comparin' our modest American women to 
them damned stark naked Greeks, I'm done!" 

262 



HUMORS OF LAW AND POLITICS 

Like Sam himself, the crowd knew the Greeks 
solely from crude illustrations of sculpture in 
their schoolbooks, and his appeal struck home. 
A howl of cheers went up, and the New Eng- 
lander retired discomfited. 

There are many tales in Delaware and on the 
Eastern Shore of voters openly put up at auc- 
tion, of negroes, notoriously oblivious of time, 
holding out for a high bribe until too late to cast 
their ballots before the closing of the polls, and 
thus losing both pay and votes. A sheriff of 
Kent countv on the Eastern Shore was to be 
elected in those sad, mad, glad, bad days gone, 
and the contest turned upon the vote of a single 
citizen, who had sat all day, metaphorically and 
literally, ''on the fence", awaiting his reward. 
One manager offered him $10, and was met by 
an advance to $15 by the rival manager. Then a 
wag stepped forward, and posing as auctioneer, 
systemized the bidding. The price went to $50, 
to which the opposing bidder added a new sad- 
dle and bridle, thus mnning the vote that 
elected his candidate. Early next morning the 
defeated candidate was wakened by the impact 
of a handful of pebbles against his window, and 
looking out he saw his successful rival who had 
come praying a loan of $500 upon the ground 
that the election had been so expensive as to 

id63 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

leave him on the edge of bankruptcy. With 
perfect good nature the loser made the loan, an 
act of neighborly generosity which made him so 
popular that thereafter he had but to ask for 
oflSce to be sure of election. 

Anthony Higgins, of a family long conspicuous 
in church and state, after years of party service 
was chosen United States Senator. His period 
of political activity covered one of peculiarly 
bitter attack, and he himself was mercilessly 
assailed by his Democratic opponents, not a few 
of whom had been his comrades from boyhood. 
His personality was strongly marked, and his 
face, tHe reverse of handsome, had a charm of 
its own, due to native vigor and the occasional 
decoration of a fascinating, wide-mouthed smile. 
He had also a gift of epigram, a provocative 
laugh, a manly voice of richest timbre. His 
personality and his racy speech were so distinc- 
tive that he lent himself to both caricature and 
parody. Perhaps it was a clever enemy, with 
perception of this fact and a rare dramatic gift, 
who made one of the shrewdest attacks that 
Anthony Higgins had to face. At any rate the 
charge was brought that the Republicans had 
conspired with Democratic election officers to 
falsify returns, and so dramatically true to the 
style and phrase of Mr. Higgins was a reported 

264 



HUMORS OF LAW AND POLITICS 

telephonic conversation in furtherance of the 
plot, that all agreed that if the tale was not 
true, it was brilliantly invented. 

His defenders, in denying the charge, had to 
admit that among his accusers must be one 
with a dramatic gift that should not be wasted 
in the squalid struggles of petty local politics. 
Anthony Higgins did not win a second term as 
Senator, and he died when still vigorous in his 
early seventies, but not before he had character- 
ized a titular member of his own party seeking 
the senatorship, as '*a moral idiot." 

A chapter of amusing absurdities might be 
written touching phases and incidents of Wil- 
mington's municipal politics in the decades 
immediately following the Civil War. Council- 
men then received one dollar for attendance at 
each meeting, and it was for years the custom 
of this body to meet in thei open at various places 
about the city, so as to observe directly places 
where public improvements were thought to be 
needed. In a single afternoon there were, on 
some days, five or six adjournments from place 
to place, with a consequent fee to each member 
of one dollar for each ' ' meeting. ' ' Often meet- 
ings were only a few blocks apart; and a coun- 
cilman sometimes "earned" his dollar by merely 
crossing the street. 

265 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

The Senate of Delaware with its nine mem- 
bers was long perhaps the smallest upper house 
in the world, and even now with seventeen it is 
far smaller than any other American state sen- 
ate. It was at the opening of the daily session of 
this little body that the late Dr. George William 
Marshall of Milford, a huge man with a singu- 
larly soft voice, was asked in the absence of the 
Chaplain to lead in prayer. Marshall began the 
Lord's Prayer, manifestly embarrassed, and 
after many attempts, and many ''vain repeti- 
tions" such as the heathen use, got as far as 
the phrase, "Thy kingdom come." He went 
over these words again and again amid the 
respectful silence of his fellows as they stood 
with bowed heads, and finally sat down in de- 
spair, exclaiming plaintively, "But, boys, it 
won't come!" 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE WELSH TRACT AND THE 
LABADISTS 

TWO land transfers in the Northern part of 
the Peninsula, one of nearly four thousand 
acres wholly mthin Cecil county, the other of 
thirty thousand acres, about three-fourths of it 
in New Castle county, the rest in Cecil, made 
near neighbors of two very different religious 
bodies. The earlier and smaller of these bodies, 
Dutch Labadists and their converts, set up a 
communistic industrial and religious society in 
1683, on part of Bohemia Manor. About twenty 
years later a colony made up mainly of Welsh 
Baptists, whose leader and minister was Thomas 
Griffith, took root upon the Welsh Tract, the 
Northern limit of which comes within about a 
mile of Newark. The Dutch Labadist mystics 
chose Bohemia Manor for the site of their little 
theocracy for the double reason that Catholic 
Maryland was tolerant, and Augustine Herrman, 
whom they thought to have conciliated, was a 
Protestant of former Dutch connections. Their 
Welsh Baptist neighbors, who came fleeing the 
cruel disabilities imposed upon British dissent- 

267 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

ers, chose Delaware for a resting place, because 
Penn also was tolerant, Delaware, rather than 
anypart of Pennsylvania,doubtless becansePenn 
preferred to have such a colony where it might 
help hold his contested claim to the Peninsula. 

The Labadists soon built up a thriving in- 
dustrial community in which they certainly 
practised diligence in business, and at least 
professed fervor of spirit in the service of the 
Lord. As to the Welsh Baptists, they framed 
at first their little log church in which they wor- 
shipped, until its brick successor of to-day was 
built in 1746, farmed the broad, flat acres of 
their tract, and the slopes of Iron Hill, as that 
region is still farmed by! some of their offspring, 
and mined the hill for iron ore, which they 
smelted in a furnace hard by. Presbyterians 
among the Welsh colonists built Glasgow church 
nearly midway the tract. Perhaps it is signifi- 
cant of the early and later American attitude 
toward communism and individualism that the 
Labadist experiment lived for less than two gen- 
erations, that the Welsh Tract still remains a 
prosperous region in considerable part peopled 
by a sturdy rural folk descended from the orig- 
inal settlers of more than two centuries ago. 

Much has been written of the Labadists as 
they lived, suffered and wrought in Europe, 

268 




THE BAPTIZING CREEK 



THE WELSH TRACT AND THE LABADISTS 

but little of their experiment on Bohemia Manor, 
which, indeed, is not even mentioned in a rather 
recent European history of the sect. The Jour- 
nal of the Labadist missionaries has been twice 
translated into English, the second time by B. B. 
James and J. F. Jameson, the former author 
of an elaborate study of the Labadists on 
Bohemia Manor. General Wilson of Wilming- 
ton has also discussed American Labadism in 
his pamphlet, '*An Old Maryland Manor." 

Jean de Labadie, a French Jesuit turned 
to Protestantism, and hailed as the most impor- 
tant convert since the early days of Calvin, 
founded at Amsterdam before 1670, a sect of 
mystics accepting in large measure the creed 
of the Dutch Protestants. Within the next six 
years the Labadists removed to various places 
in Germany and Denmark, until they found rest 
for about a half century at Wieuwerd in Dutch 
Friesland. The leaders of the sect seem to have 
had a singular gift for interesting women of rank 
and education. Their first great patroness was 
a Dutch noble lady, Anna Maria Van Schurman 
of Utrecht, called the most learned woman 
of her time, rich, elegant, and charming. Next 
came the princess Elizabeth, eldest daughter 
of the Frederick Elector Palatine and King of 
Bohemia, granddaughter of England's James 

269 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

" ' ' " —^M^^ III I I 

I. Yet again, the settlement at Wieuwerd was 
upon an estate given by the three daughters of 
the Dutch diplomatist, Francis Aarsen, Lord of 
Sommelsdyk. Finally, upon coming to America, 
the Labadists seem to have owed their acquisi- 
tion of 3750 acres of land upon Bohemia Manor, 
at least in part to the strong impression they 
made not only upon Ephraim Herrman, but 
upon his young wife and liis \sister Margaret. 

Jasper Danckaerts and Peter Sluyter, Laba- 
dist missionaries, sent from Wieuwerd to seek 
a fit place for a colony in America, reached New 
York late in September, 1679, each travelling 
under an assumed name. They kept a diary, in 
which are set down the accustomed unfavorable 
impressions of Europeans new to America. 
Danckaerts, a man of many genuinely sound 
qualities, is believed to have been the writer of 
the diary. It bristles with the pietism of the 
time, with the uncharitable self-righteousness 
of those who believe themselves privileged to 
intimacy with the Almighty and his purposes. 
The diarist notes that "one of the wicked and 
godless sailors," whom he had seen on the 
voyage to America, had broken his leg, adding 
the pious comment, ' ' In this we saw and acknowl- 
edged the Lord and his righteousness." 

Englishmen they disliked as enemies of the 

270 



THE WELSH TRACT AND THE LABADISTS 

Dutch, Quakers as mystics of another sect. As 
a matter of fact William Penn had negotiated 
with the Dutch Labadists in 1677, hoping to 
have them join his projected American colony. 
New York they reported as mainly made up of 
swindling small tradesmen, who drugged the 
Indians with *'vile rum," and then outdid them 
in bargains.- Although the missionaries/ are 
horrified at the use of rum, they speak warmly 
of peach brandy in New Jersey, apple brandy 
served by Paul Jaquet at what is now Wil- 
mington, and of beer, wine, and cider in sundry 
places. They thought the preacher whom they 
heard in New York a mere wild man, and prob- 
ably drunk. The people as a whole seemed 
' ' wild ' ' from dwelling in * ' a savage land. " ' ' A 
poor lame clerk," who conducted a religious 
service at New Castle, and "made a prayer, if 
such it could be called, ' ' they seem to have held 
in utter contempt. Tobacco, slavery, and the 
condition of indentured servants the diary con- 
demns ; but the Labadist community on Bohemia 
Manor, under the rule of Peter Sluyter, culti- 
vated tobacco with slave labor, and grew rich by 
the process, as did Peter himself. The mission- 
aries seem to have been intelligent observers 
of the land and soil as ^they journeyed, and 
Danckaerts at least was of excellent education, 

271 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

■ 

for the diary is well written in simple and 
condensed style ; and on a later voyage Danck- 
aerts translated the Psalms into Dutch verse. 
At New York the Labadist missionaries fell 
in with Ephraim Herrman, just then taking a 
wife, and journeyed with liim, his bride and her 
young brother to New Castle. Both Herrman 
and his bride became deeply interested in 
Labadism from the talk of the Labadists by the 
way. Ephraim, a rather weak young man, 
seems to have been reached by the propagan- 
dists, while yet they tarried in New York. At 
New Castle the missionaries staid in Ephraim 's 
house, where they found Ms sister Margaret. 
She showed them "much kindness," and they 
describe her as "a little volatile, but of sweet 
and good disposition." When one considers 
the source of this carefully metered compliment, 
one suspects that Margaret must have been 
a particularly charming person. The diary 
again says that Margaret was a bit wild, "as 
is the nature of the country." Perhaps the 
business of interesting Margaret Herrman in 
Labadism was no unpleasant task to the mis- 
sionaries, neither of whom was an old man. She 
plaintively confessed herself like a wild, un- 
trained vine gromng in a wild country, and 
wished to know more of God. Life at New Castle 

272 



THE WELSH TRACT AND THE LABADISTS 



may have been normally a bit dull for the lively 
daughter of Augustine Herrman. 

From New Castle the missionaries journeyed 
to the home of Herrman 's second son, Casparus, 
who was holding down liis father's grant on the 
Delaware at St. Augustine, near Port Penn of 
to-day. A great old brick house at St. Augustine 
testifies to the later importance of that holding. 
A journey of twenty-two miles by a broad cart 
road through the woods brought the mission- 
aries to the manor house of Augustine Herrman, 
where they found him ''miserable in body and 
soul." They thought Bohemia Manor the 
most beautiful bit of land they had yet seen in 
America. From much the same site Thomas 
F. Bayard of Wilmington now looks out over the 
noble Bohemia River to the long Bohemia 
Bridge, and beyond to the hills of Elk Neck, but 
no tenant of Mr. Bayard's holding calls him 
''Lord," or fetches him fat geese, diamond- 
back terrapin, razor-back hogs, snowy swan, or 
wild turkeys, in token of fealty. 

Herrman, pleased at first with the Labadists, 
promised to sell them as much land as they 
might need, and at a fair price; for they had 
fetched a letter of recommendation from 
Ephraim, and who knows but that the volatile 

18 273 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

Margaret may have put in a sly word in favor of 
the missionaries? The visitors believed Herrman 
and his manor falling into decay, and 
thought him godless, liis black servants bar- 
baric. Here they met one woman whom they 
probably did not please, Herrman 's English 
second wife, not elsewhere mentioned than in 
the diary. They wrote her down ' ' a miserable, 
doubly miserable wife," and again, *Hhe most 
artful of women. ' ' As like as not the ill impres- 
sion was mutual. At any rate, after the mis- 
sionaries had journeyed back to Europe, seeing 
Harvard college on the way, and reporting it 
as of probably not above ten students, ungov- 
emed, idle, disputatious, and addicted to to- 
bacco and wine, Herrman changed his mind as to 
selling land to the Labadists. When the leaders 
returned in 1683 with their colonists, they 
forced Herrman, by an appeal to the courts, to 
keep his promise. He afterward placed a cod- 
icil to his will tying up the property lest 
Ephraim alienate too much of the land to his 
new friends. 

The Labadist settlement had Sluyter for 
superintendent, and Danckaerts for visitor at 
times, though he seems to have lived mostly in 
Europe, where he died before the colony was 
tv/enty years old. Petrus Bayard of New York 

274 



THE WELSH TRACT AND THE LABADISTS 



and Bombay Hook, a convert to Labadism, 
joined the community for a few years, as did 
Ephraim Herrman. The creed of the Labadist 
required that if one of a married couple wished 
to join the community and the other did not, the 
convert must desert the unconverted consort. 
Perhaps it was incidents of this kind that made 
the Labadists locally unpopular. It has been 
vaguely asserted that they held strange doc- 
trines as to marriage ; but it does not appear that 
they commonly sanctioned irregular unions, 
though one leader is quoted as saying that only 
God knew whether a man lived with a woman as 
a wife or as a harlot. A visitor to the settlement 
found the men and women dining separately. At 
dinner the men sat silent with their hats on, 
apparently waiting for some inner incitement to 
prayer. Gradually and at irregular intervals 
they took off their hats and fell to their food. 
All bedrooms were open to the inspection of 
those in authority. It appears that Sluyter and 
his wife ruled with strictness, and tolerated no 
dissent from their orders. The society never 
numbered more than about one hundred per- 
sons, men, women, and children. It had some 
aspects of an early Brook Farm. 

King William III in 1692, ordered the Gov- 
ernor of Maryland to protect Vorsman (the 

275 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

alias of Sluyter), Daiickaerts, De la Grange, 
'^Bayert," and some others living peaceably and 
religiously together on a plantation on Bohemia 
River. Perhaps tliis order was intended to 
except the Labadists from the operation of the 
laws establishing the Anglican Church in Mary- 
land. Dutch William naturally had a fellow feel- 
ing for his Netherlandish brethren and their con- 
verts, professing very much the faith in which 
he had been bred. As a matter of fact Danckaerts 
had probably been very little resident on Bohe- 
mia Manor, and Bayard had left the Labadists 
four yea^s before this time. Sluyter alienated 
much of the Labadist tract, kept a fine ''neck" 
as liis own, died rich in 1722 at the age of 77, 
and left posterity. Many well known families 
of Delaware and Maryland are descended from 
the communist leader. A few years after his 
death the community had dispersed. 

The story of the Welsh Tract is briefer than 
that of the Labadists, though the religious so- 
ciety of the former has outlived the Labadists 
communion by almost a century. To the ''hun- 
dred" of Pencader the Welshmen gave name, 
and doubtless they gave the same name also to 
Iron Hill, for the element "pen" means moun- 
tain, hill, or headland. The broad plain South- 
ward from Newark, sweeps with a slight dip 

276 



THE WELSH TRACT AND THE LABADISTS 

to the infant Christiana, and then merges mth 
the sharp slope that grows into the forest-clad 
hill. Between the creek and the beginning of the 
slope is a lovely grove mainly of giant oaks, 
scattered over a park-like irregular bit of 
meadow edging the stream where it widens to a 
pool beyond a little bridge. Within the shadow of 
the grove, and beneath the shadow of Iron Hill, 
lies the stone-walled graveyard, with its tiny 
church of battened roof and Flemish-bond brick, 
and its dated roadward gable. Across the rough 
road, where it rises slowly hillward is a little 
stone cottage whose tenant serves as sexton to 
the church. The whole spot is inexpressibly 
sweet, for both church and graveyard are beau- 
tifully kept, and here nature smiles in rich- 
est peace. 

A Welslmian fresh from his native hills 
would instantly feel at home in this charming 
scene, for oak grove, walled churchyard, silent 
little church, and tiny stone cottage, with the 
overhanging hill, look as if brought across seas 
bodily from Wales and placed in this congenial 
setting. An old Cromwellian soldier lies buried 
here, and there are tombstones lettered in Eng- 
lish, in Welsh and in Latin. The service of the 
Church was in Welsh as late as the close of the 
Eighteenth Century. Many graves bear names 

277 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 



now worn by residents of the Welsh Tract or 
of neighboring villages— Watson, Jones of 
course, Evans, Rice in various spellings, and in 
its fuller form Price, derived from the true 
Welsh Ap Rice, Griffith, Clendennin, Thomas, 
James and a score of others. 

Not far away is Cooch's Bridge, where patri- 
otic women have placed a monument to mark the 
scene of the first battle in which the Stars-and- 
Stripes was displayed, on September 3, 1777. 
This monument stands at the gateway to the 
ample and beautifully undulating wooded and 
watered grounds of the Cooch homestead. The 
first of the Cooch family in Delaware, man-of- 
business to a noble ancestor to the Marquis of 
Salisbury, came to America in the second quarter 
of the Eighteenth Century because liis lordsliip 
showed a discreditable fondness for a young 
daughter of the family. Tliis high-minded land 
agent did not immigrate so late to America as to 
prevent his descendants from being whole-souled 
patriots in the war for independence. By that 
time they were thoroughly Americanized, though 
the family has never lost its English traits 
and sympathies. 

Less than half a mile from the church is the 
Welsh Tract Public School, like the sexton's 
cottage, of stone, early set up by the colonists, 

278 



THE WELSH TRACT AND THE LABADISTS 

and ever since used by their offspring. Hard by 
is the Evans farm, passed do^vn from father to 
son for many generations, along with the deed 
signed by an Indian chief with "his mark." 
This circumstance of the deed thus signed 
recalls the fact that evidence amounting to an 
extremely strong probability points to the 
Welsh Tract as the earliest home of Jefferson 
Davis's ancestors in the United States. The 
Davis of the early Eighteenth Century alienated 
his land, and in so doing signed the deed with 
"his mark." One of the same family, however, 
who used the form "Davies," was President 
of Princeton College in 1759. Judge David 
Davis, probably of a different family, was born 
a few miles Westward in Cecil county. The 
present venerable "Elder" Ewbanks, who holds 
fortnightly services at the Welsh Tract Church, 
served in youth as a Confederate soldier, but 
he thinks no ill of the Government at Washing- 
ton, though his little grandson bears the name 
Jefferson Davis Lee. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
EDUCATION AND UPLIFT IN DELAWARE 

FREE public education was not yet well 
established in Delaware until near the 
middle of the last century, and long thereafter 
was supported in large part by a system of local 
taxation, under which the landlord's real estate 
and the tenant's stock and tools were equally 
burdened. The Constitution of 1792 provided 
for legislation looking to the establishment of 
a public school system, and provision was made 
by legislation in 1796 for the creation of an 
educational ** general fund" in aid of local 
taxation. That fund slowly grew by investment 
and reinvestment until the income from it went 
far toward the maintenance of schools out- 
side of Wilmington. 

A small body of intelligent and public spir- 
ited citizens steadily urged for more than a 
century the improvement of the public school 
system. Foremost among these men for three- 
fourths of the last century, was Willard Hall, a 
native of Massachusetts, who, coming to Dela- 
ware in 1803, when twenty-three years old, at the 

280 



EDUCATION AND UPLIFT IN DELAWARE 

suggestion of James A. Bayard the elder, won 
liigh political honors, and sat for forty-eight 
years as United States District Judge. He stead- 
ily strove to stimulate sentiment for improved 
public education. He it was who drew the law of 
1829, defining the essentials of the free school 
system for the rest of the century. It required at 
least another decade to extend the system to the 
whole State ; and more than half a century later 
the free schools in most villages and country 
districts were far behind the age. 

Extreme local self government under the 
form of pure democracy with woman suffrage 
was the disting-uishing characteristic of the 
system thus established, which with various 
modifications is maintained even yet. The dis- 
trict ''school meeting," originally composed of 
all qualified male voters, and later including 
women liable to taxation, determined the amount 
qf money to be raised by taxation for support of 
schools, and chose the "school committee" to 
administer the affairs of the district. Here was 
the New England town meeting in little. At 
first a school meeting could vote *'no school." 
In time this power was denied the little pure 
democracies of the school districts, and each 
district was required to raise by taxation a sum 
equal to its share of the general fund. The law 

281 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

was pretty steadily improved from the middle 
of the last century onward, and about fifty 
years ago a State Superintendent of schools 
was appointed. In many districts, however, 
then and long thereafter, the school year was 
shortened to save money, and almost every- 
where teachers were wretchedly paid. As 
village schools were improved, some of the 
old endowed academies ceased to function for 
lack of pupils, and coalesced with the public 
school system, a line of development taken in 
some other states. 

Wilmington early took the lead in improving 
its public schools, and it has long maintained 
them independently of the State system. Pri- 
vate schools preparing boys for college pros- 
pered for many years at Wilmington. Here 
taught the celebrated William Cobbett. In the 
middle quarter of the last century there flour- 
ished at Wilmington, for most of the time under 
Methodist patronage, a ''female college," in 
effect a ''finishing school," with pupils from the 
local area, from neighboring and even distant 
states. The Friends' School, established in 1748, 
still survives, Math high repute. Of course the 
Catholics, stronger at Wilmington than else- 
where in Delaware, have established there paro- 
chial schools, and others. The Wilmington 

282 



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EDUCATION AND UPLIFT IN DELAWARE 

Conference Academy of the Methodist Church,^ 
chartered in 1873, was established at Dover as a 
central point, where it has since served a liighly 
useful purpose as a preparatory school of 
high standards. A recent educatidnal under- 
taking at Wilmington of significant interest is 
the largely endowed and admirably equipped 
Tower Hill School. 

A few years ago Pierre S. Du Pont became 
interested in the expansion of Delaware College, 
and matured in his mind a comprehensive 
scheme for the improvement of public education 
in rural Delaware, and to use a term savoring 
of cant, for general civic "uplift." Charles 
Lamb once said, when it was proposed to erect 
a conspicuous monument to a worthy and use- 
ful but invincibly shy person, "We should be 
modest for a modest man." If outward signs 
are to be trusted, Mr. Du Pont is such a man. 
Hence the story of his public benevolence will 
be told here in brief form, and with scrupulous 
regard for Lamb's happy and characteristic 
utterance. 

Before doing aught that showed on the sur- 
face, Mr. Du Pont created a working organiza- 
tion, the Service Citizens of Delaware, July 

^ Since 1918 known aa the Wesley Collegiate Institute. 
See Chapter XIII. 

283 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

23, 1918, wMch was endowed by its founder 
with a trust fund to yield $90,000 a year for 
seven years. Active-minded men and women all 
over the State came into the body under the 
presidency of Mr. Du Pont, with Henry P. Scott, 
Dr. R. G. Paynter and Henry Ridgely as vice- 
presidents, John Rascob as treasurer and 
Rodney Sharp as secretary. Dr. Joseph H. 
Odell, long known to Mr. Du Pont, was made in 
effect the executive officer of the organization, 
and director of its general activities, with a 
corps of paid subordinates. Some of those 
activities were and are concerned with Ameri- 
canization, public health, statistics, public safety, 
housing, the improvement of the condition of 
the colored people, and above all else public 
education. Wherever it was possible these activ- 
ities functioned through agencies, volunteer 
or official, already existing. The Service Citi- 
zens, thus acting, and supplied with ample funds, 
have promoted a vast deal of helpful legislation, 
greatly aroused public interest in many reforms, 
gathered and coordinated statistics of many 
kinds in a fashion probably unequaled by the 
public statistics of any state in the Union. 

To further the work of improving public 
education, the Service Citizens obtained in 1919, 
the chartering of the School Auxiliary Associa- 

284 



EDUCATION AND UPLIFT IN DELAWARE 

tion, and for the activities of this body, in effect 
an emanation of the Service Citizens, the 
founder created fonr trust funds aggregating 
more than $3,600,000. In the same year the 
Delaware Legislature enacted, after a struggle, 
a new school code, prepared by the experts of the 
General Education Board with headquarters in 
New York, Avhich experts were aided in their 
constructive work by information drawn from a 
highly detailed and extremely searching investi- 
gation of educational conditions in rural Dela- 
ware. The investigation brought out some well 
nigh appalling facts. Carefully collated, the 
results of this investigation were widely distri- 
buted throughout the State in pamphlet form. 
Mr. Du Pont with much hesitation became the 
head of the new State Board of Education 
created under the code ; and the Service Citizens, 
acting through the School Auxiliary, co-operated 

in the work of the Board, and liberally sup- 
plied funds. 

It was Mr. Du Font's plan to aid public edu- 
cation with his private wealth in such fashion 
as to avoid as far as possible aught that might 
tend to cripple local initiative and the instinct 
of self-help. He therefore offered aid in the 
improvement of school buildings and premises 
conditioned upon the appropriation of an equal 

285 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

amount by the local beneficiaries. As it turned 
out, in the end he found it necessary to give aid 
in many districts far beyond half the cost 
of improvements. 

As to the schools for colored cliildren, long 
cruelly neglected, the colored people were so 
manifestly unable to raise any considerable 
share of the sum needed, that Mr. Du Pont gave 
outright and unconditionally $500,000 'to pro- 
vide school premises, and erect school buildings 
for about 4500 colored cliildren belonging to the 
rural schools of their race. In one district 
a separate school was built for children of the 
so-called ''Moors." The children of this small 
racial group, probably of remote American 
Indian origin, but according to local tradition 
sprung from Moorish shipwrecked folk, have 
been excluded from the schools for whites, and 
some of the well-to-do *' Moors" have main- 
tained schools of their own, so that their, children 
should not attend the schools for colored chil- 
dren. The most modern buildings, with ample 
grounds and model furnishings have been 
provided for many of the colored schools ; and 
probably before the end of the year 1922 the 
colored children of rural Delaware will have 
school facilities equal to those of whites in the 
most advanced states of the Union. Their 

286 



EDUCATION AND UPLIFT IN DELAWARE 

teachers also are well equipped for the work. 

Aid to the rural schools for whites has been 
given in large measure, especially in Sussex 
county, the only county that has voted to bond 
itself in aid of the improvement. Some of the 
''special districts," which phrase usually means 
the village schools, have undertaken to bond 
themselves in aid of improvements to which the 
fund of the Service Citizens' School Auxiliary 
will make large contributions, and other such 
districts are expected to do likewise. 

It was inevitable that so vast an undertaking 
for public betterment by a single private citizen 
should excite suspicion, criticism, opposition, in 
any community, especially in one of rooted con- 
servatism such as rural Delaware. Mr. Du 
Font's motives were questioned, his agents were 
shamefully assailed; the new system was criti- 
cized as top-heavy, and destructive of local ini- 
tiative. Suddenly, the pure democracy of the 
school meeting, the powers of which were cur- 
tailed by the new code and by the consolidation 
of many country districts with those of neighbor- 
ing villages, became inexpressibly dear to rural 
Delawareans. The ' ' little red schoolhouse ' ' was 
hailed as the palladium of local liberty, though 
in most districts it was never red, and in many 
it had only the color scheme imparted by na- 

287 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

ture 's hand through more than half a century of 
wind, rain and sun, frost, hail and snow. 

All this criticism bore fruit in the repeal of 
the new school code at a special session of the 

Legislature in 1920. Mr. Du Pont bowed to 
public opinion, and co-operated in the framing 
of an amended school code, which failed to 
pass the Legislature. Still another code was 
framed and passed, tliis time providing a state 
tax of 25 cents per $100 in annual aid of educa- 
tion, and a centralized control through a Board 
of Education, whose secretary, appointed for one 
year, acts as State Superintendent of Schools.^ 
This last measure has, of course, thrown 
the educational plans of the Service Citizens into 
some confusion, but that organization still lives 
in useful activity, prepared to give whatever aid 
it can to the furtherance of public education. 
Its school statistics alone are of enormous value, 
and the work it has accomplished for the colored 
children of rural Delaware will probably prove 
a spur to the improvement of the schools for 

* In addition to the several funds aggregating more than 
$3,600,0U0 in aid of public schools. Mr. Du Pont has given ap- 
proximately $1,100,000 to the University of Delaware, and is 
giving annually $90,000 to further the activities of the Service 
Citizens. The State's contribution for the improvement of 
public schools has been a small fraction of the amount con- 
tributed through the Service Citizens' organization. 

288 




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EDUCATION AND UPLIFT IN DELAWARE 

whites in all parts of the State. School attend- 
ance has greatly improved, thanks to the zeal of 
the Service Citizens, their executive officer and 
his aids. The unexhausted funds of the Service 
Citizens are still available in aid of school dis- 
tricts ready to co-operate with the organization 
in the improvement of school buildings, and 
school premises ; and the vast benefit that Sussex 
county seems likely to draw from its improved 
schools will be example and incentive to the 
whole State. 

Much is to be said as to the value of the 
local system that the code of 1919 seemed to a 
sensitive public likely to emasculate, if not 
destroy. There is a danger in standardization, 
and there is a nervous strain upon both teachers 
and pupils in the huge modern school building, 
however wisely built and fitly furnished, such as 
may be avoided in smaller units. In every state 
of the Union the problem is presented of main- 
taining a general public school system under 
centralized authority, with its economies and its 
intended efficiency, without crippling those pre- 
cious things, the personal initiative of the indi- 
vidual teacher, the distinctive personality of the 
individual child. The benevolent Delawarean 
who has undertaken so great a task for his 
native state, may yet help to create for Delaware 

19 289 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

a public school system wisely ordained and con- 
trolled in its larger lines by a central authority, 
yet able to preserve the personality and initia- 
tive of both teacher and pupil, a system live from 
top to bottom, and drawing its life blood from 
aroused and active local initiative. To accom- 
plish such a reform would be to make Delaware 
educationally the model state of the Union. 

The University of Delaware at Newark, 
which comprehends what is still Delaware 
College for men, the recently created affiliated 
Women's College of Delaware, one of the chief 
blessings and most efficient institutions of the 
State, and the Agricultural Experiment Station 
as coordinated with the University's Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, stands at the head of Dela- 
ware's educational system; and here the State 
and Mr. Du Pont have co-operated without the 
friction that has marked the relations of the 
Service Citizens to public education. In 1933 
the University will celebrate the one-hundredth 
anniversary of its founding, though the insti- 
tution, as sprung from the germ supplied by 
Newark Academy, founded in 1767, may lay 
claim in effect to greater age. 

As ** Newark College" the University of to- 
day, opened its doors to students in the Spring 
of 1834, when Old College was new and the sole 

290 



EDUCATION AND UPLIFT IN DELAWARE 

adornment of a raw campns since matured to the 
thing of beauty that all loyal alumni love and 
reverence. One professor and one student, a 
Sophomore, father of Judge George Gray, made 
up the collegiate body on that opening day. New- 
ark Academy, an outgrowth of Francis Alison's 
Academy established at New London, Pennsyl- 
vania, itself in some measure a response to the 
prayer of the Presbytery of Lewes in 1738 
asking the Synod of Philadelpliia to hasten 
provision for classical education in these parts, 
became the preparatory department of the 
College. At that early day Newark College, a 
few years later called Delaware College, was 
conducted upon semi-monastic principles, with 
prayers and recitations before an embarrass- 
ingly early breakfast, and simplicity in both 
lodging and refectory. The college year was 
arranged with vacations timed in aid of agri- 
culture at home, and commencement came in 
October. Prayer meetings and professorial 
visits of inspection were frequent, and both 
probably ineffective for keeping ribald youth 
in the path of virtue. An eminent astronomer 
as president had a salary of $1200 a year as late 
as the middle fifties of the last century, and 
other professors had $800 a year, except the 
professor of English, whose light task brought 

291 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

him $600 a year. Board was as low as $1.25 a 
week, and a student could get through the year 
on $100 or a trifle more. In spite of low salaries 
the faculty included scholarly men, some of whom 
eventually occupied chairs in the most impor- 
tant colleges of the land. Students also came 
from distant states and even from foreign parts. 

Mismanagement, poverty and an untoward 
incident closed the college at the end of its first 
quarter century. It slept with the sleej^ing vil- 
lage for more than a decade, undisturbed by 
the guns and drums and tramplings of the Civil 
War, to awake in 1870 as a beneficiary of the 
*^ Morrill" Act, providing for aid from the sale 
of public lands to colleges teaching military 
tactics, agriculture and the mechanic arts, not 
to the exclusion of the ''humanities." At first 
the semi-monastic system was revived, but not 
for long, though an unedif ying form of ' ' compul- 
sory chapel" continued until recent years to 
prove how slow a college may be to learn. 

After almost half a century of struggle Dela- 
ware College attracted the interest of Mr. Du 
Pont, and only the oncoming of the World War 
prevented the rapid realization of his large 
scheme for expansion. The Women's College 
was founded by the State in affiliation with 
Delaware College, and the aid of Mr. Du Pont 

292 



EDUCATION AND UPLIFT IN DELAWARE 

made .possible the physical connection of the 
two by a campus half a mile long. Two of the 
buildings contemplated in the scheme of expan- 
sion for Delaware College were finished before 
the chill of the World War settled upon 
all things human; but even now a movement 
is on foot for the erection of a memorial 
library on **the Green" between the two 
colleges, in honor of Delaware's soldiers who 
perished in the great strife. The expansion of 
Delaware College was brought almost to its pre- 
sent state under the presidency of Dr. Samuel 
Chiles Mitchell. Under his successor, Dr. Walter 
Hullihen, the institution has assumed the style 
''The University of Delaware," and the affil- 
iated Women's College has continued its re- 
markable growth, until it now has about two- 
thirds as many students as Delaware College. 
The academic population of Newark now con- 
siderably exceeds six hundred. 



CHAPTER XIX 
ACCOMACK AND NORTHAMPTON 

VIRGINIA, rightly called ''the mother of 
states, ' ' has always stirred the interest and 
even the affections of her sister commonwealths, 
has ever held a unique place in the Nation. Her 
sad mistake of 1861, a step taken in hesitation 
and sorrow, gave to the Union her youngest 
daughter. West Virginia, a painful birth, for the 
child was delivered by the Caesarian operation, 
the cruel and rude surgery of the sword. ^ If 
West Virginia is the Old Dominion's youngest 
born, her first born, but for the favor of one 
Stuart prince to the Calverts, another to the 
Penns, might well have been this pleasant Pen- 
insula of Delaware and the Eastern Shore. To 
the latter she first brought European civiliza- 
tion, long before the partition was made between 
the Penn and Calvert claimants; for not only 
did William Claiborne, Virginia's Secretary of 
State, make a settlement upon Kent Island in 

'Had the Old Dominion not been partitioned, the recent 
disorders that have created anarchy in West Virginia, might 
perhaps have been avoided. 

294 



ACCOMACK AND NORTHAMPTON 

the very year of Zwaanendael, but the Virgin- 
ians of Jamestown had occupied Northampton 
almost twenty years earlier. 

Socially and historically Virginia's two ^ 
Eastern Shore counties, with a land area of less 
than 750 square miles, a population of less than 
53,000, form a region perhaps as significant and 
interesting as any in the Union. Governor Dale 
of Virginia sent over to the Eastern Shore in 
1614 a little group of colonists to boil salt and 
catch fish for Jamestown, and the region where 
they operated near Cape Charles is still called 
Dale's Purchase. By 1623 the Eastern Shore 
was strongly attracting settlers from the less 
wholesome region of Jamestown, and by the 
opening of the Eighteenth Century the two coun- 
ties had a population of probably 5000. As yet 
there were few blacks.^ The Anglican Church 
was planted almost with the earliest settlement. 

"Slavery came later on the Eastern Shore than on the 
West of Chesapeake, and grew slowly. The earliest colored 
persons in the two counties were free, and a few were large 
landholders and respected citizens, who eventually held slaves 
of their own color. The free colored folk, of course, suffered 
disadvantages, especially as slavery increased. Many proved 
thriftless, and some became a charge upon the community; 
not a few were criminals. Slavery soon set its cruel mark 
upon the whole race, and only within comparatively recent 
times have the colored people of the Eastern Shore, both of 
Virginia and Maryland, recovered something of the economic 
status held by early colonial free blacks. 

295 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 



Of this church the first priest seems to have 
been The Rev. Robert Bolton, probably B. A. of 
Oxford University. The first church was a tiny 
log hut, defended by palisades, as was the 
second. In those days the region was called 
''The Kingdome of Accawmacke ; " but for a 
time the official name of the whole was North- 
ampton, though Accomack clung to popular 
speech. In 1662 the region was divided into two 
V counties, on the North, Accomack, Northampton 
on the South. 

Beginnings in Accomack and Northampton, 
as at JamestoAvn, were simple to crudity. Early 
dwellings, like churches, and civic buildings, 
were made of logs, and mostly small. "Forts" 
were wooden palisades; but few such were 
needed, for the Indians of the Eastern Shore 
seem to have been mainly mild mannered. 
Famous among them was "The Laughing 
King," a sort of savage "Roi d' Yvetot," who, 
if he did not, like the merry monarch of Beran- 
ger's verse, ride his donkey with jug in hand and 
dog at heel, may well have had "une soif un pen 
vive," and have given his subjects "a hundred 
reasons" "De le nommer leur pere." At any 
rate, the Laugliing King was a friend of the 
wliites, and to him they owed the warning that 
saved many from the massacre of 1644. 

296 




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ACCOMACK AND NORTHAMPTON 

As the country became settled with whites, 
and royalists fleeing the rule of the saints in 
England came to Virginia, class distinctions 
were sharpened. Royalists were strong in the 
North, Parliment men farther "South, where 
plain folk were many. It was first come first 
served; and those who had choice of the best 
and most favorably situated lands, especially 
if they were of fair education and gently born 
and bred, became the natural leaders, social 
and political, gathered gear, extended their 
holdings, and built themselves houses, some- 
times of the manorial type, though mostly of 
moderate size and without great outward show 
of splendor. Hardly elsewhere in the United 
States have families of local influence, some- 
times rising to national importance, persisted 
so long in unbroken succession from father to 
son, as social and political leaders. Colonial 
families of distinction on the Eastern Shore of 
Virginia have been intermarrying for nearly 
three centuries; and even today, though some 
families have died out and others have left the 
local region for larger fields of activity, the 
descendants of the early stock show persistent 
vigor, physical and mental, and the plainest 
among those of traditional distinction have a 
charm of manner hard to match. 

297 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

If Colonial Virginia of the Eastern Shore 
may be said to have developed a sort of local 
aristocracy, it was one of relatively simple 
life, and not of a haughtily exclusive attitude 
toward plainer folk. As a matter of fact, 
although representatives of the English gentry 
came to the region, few men of title came, almost 
none of the higher nobility, except here and 
there a younger son of adventurous spirit, or 
perhaps of habits that the family thought might 
be the better of a long sea voyage and new sur- 
roundings. A few baronets there were, and a 
considerable group of untitled country gentle- 
men. Indeed the two counties were proudly 
called ''The Land of Gentlemen." Skilled 
mechanics held a place of social respect, espe- 
cially carpenters and sliipwrights. Some such 
became large land holders, and probably lived 
to see their grandchildren moving with the local 
"best." Western Shore planters seem some- 
times to have learned mechanical trades the bet- 
ter to direct the work of their slaves. One of 
Monroe's ancestors was a carpenter, and George 
Washington did not fear manual toil, was a 
good enough builder to design Pohick Church. 
It must be remembered that Robert E. Lee, of 
Eastern Shore descent in at least one line, 

298 



ACCOMACK AND NORTHAMPTON 

gave us that fine definition of a gentleman, ''A 
man that never willingly reminds another 
of inferiority." 

Redemptioners came to the Eastern Shore of 
Virginia, as to other parts of the Peninsula, and 
eventually took their place in free society, often 
as land holders. Adventurous men, some of 
them offenders against local law, many excluded 
from good land on the water front, took to the 
islands, and led the free life of fishermen and 
sailors, sure of wringing their essential needs 
from the natural opportunities of bay or ocean. 
The islanders were cruder than sheltered folk 
on the mainland, but they were lovers of liberty, 
and men of sturdy self-respect; though many 
were untaught in books, and primitive in taste 
and manners. Some islands on the Atlantic 
coast were frequented by pirates. *' Black- 
beard," whose name was Teach, famous in the 
annals of piracy, was reputed a former resident 
of Accomack, and the name survived on the 
Eastern Shore at least until forty years ago. 
Eastern Shore folk early stocked the Atlantic 
coast islands with cattle and hogs, which multi- 
plied mightily in their essentially wild condition. 
A pirate crew was reported shooting cattle and 

299 > 



< 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

hogs on one of these islands to stock ship 
with meat. 

No part of the Peninsula is better loved by 
its natives than Accomack and Northampton. 
None is quite so rich in local history, family 
tradition, quaint personal narrative. None 
has a more wholesome and delightful climate; 
and the two counties boast themselves the rich- 
est agriculturally in the United States in pro- 
portion to the acreage under cultivation. None 
is so little known to the outside world. Travel- 
lers speeding by express train down the back- 
bone of the Peninsula to take the long ferry 
across the mouth of the Chesapeake to Norfolk 
or Old Point, rush for the last seventy miles 
along a rather low, level tongue of land, with 
the Chesapeake sometimes in sight on one side, 
the Atlantic on the other, and neither at many 
points so much as six miles away. The train 
passes through no considerable town, and the 
larger homesteads are invisible, far out on the 
creeks or inlets, for salt water is the Eastern 
Shoreman's wine. Glorious pine forests much 
of the time hide the true horizon ; and here and 
there, through plumbline, bare, serried trunks 
of tall pines, rising like gigantic organ pipes, 
one glimpses the blue of bay or ocean, foam- 
flecked with wliite-caps, and punctuated with 

300 



ACCOMACK AND NORTHAMPTON 

sails atilt, etherially white in the distance, as 
if woven on celestial looms.^ 

This slender tongue between bay and ocean, 
is the land that the Virginian of the Eastern 
Shore loves with a passion that the stranger 
can scarce understand. It owes its beauty to 
the presence of the sea and the sea-like bay, to 
creek and inlet, evergreen forest, noble native 
oak, beech, magnolia, and to a sky enriched and 
tender from the softening, sweetening influence 
of free tidal waters. That deep sand of the soil 
is warm, *' quick," easily cultivated, promptly 
responsive to fertilizing agents. The earliest 
settlers found the maize and tobacco of the 
Indians growing luxuriantly, and producing two 
crops a year. Today this soil grows two crops 
of white potatoes a year, one harvested in late 
June or early July, the other in October. The 
fig and the pomegranate flourish, and straw- 
berries ripen in early May. The normal sea- 
sons, AVinter, and Summer, are singularly sweet, 
and the antiseptic winds from the Atlantic 
bring health and charm to that narrow land 
between bay and ocean. As the land a few miles 

•It is boasted that the railway of 14 miles from Cape 
Charles City to Cape Charles itself, running through a very 
garden area, is the best paying line in the United States. 
The terminal station is Kiptopeke. 

301 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

from the girding salt waters, creeks and inlets 
appears dull to the stranger's eye, save when 
it is clothed in growing crops, so some of the 
locally famous homesteads have little outwardly 
to impress the visitor. 

Onlv a considerable volume could record the 
history and tradition connected with Accomack 
and Northampton. The very earliest Ameri- 
can protest against taxation without represen- 
tation came from this region a century before 
the Declaration of Independence. In spite of 
Virginia's severe laws against dissenters, en- 
forced especially against Quakers, who began 
preaching on the Eastern Shore about the mid- 
dle of the Seventeenth Century and were 
expelled with dire threats, some of the sect were 
suffered to settle there before the end of the 
century, and at least one such family won the 
respect of the whole community. Perhaps the 
earliest Quaker meeting house in the whole 
country was built in Accomack. The Custis 
family had a fine old mansion called Arlington, 
on the Chesapeake side, and here is the tomb of 
that John Custis IV, the father-in-law of 
Martha Custis, afterward Martha Washington. 
The tombstone, bearing the Custis arms and 
carved in London, declares that though married 
twice, Mr. Custis never really lived except dur- 

302 



ACCOMACK AND NORTHAMPTON 

ing the seven years when he kept bachelor's 
hall at Arlington. An apologetic accompany- 
ing inscription declares the scandalous portion 
of the epitaph to have been placed upon the 
stone at the declared wish of the dead man. 

Another John Custis, notorious for a stormy 
married life, once took his wife with him in a 
carriage, and drove into the creek. As they 
approached deep water the wife asked, ''Where 
are you going, Mr. Custis ? " ' ' To hell, Madame, ' ' 
was the answer, to which, with a cool wave of 
the hand, the wife said, ''Drive on, Mr. Custis." 
Tradition says that after this incident domestic 
life at Arlington was less stormy. The "Arling- 
ton," opposite Washington, once of the Lees, 
was named for the Eastern Shore mansion.^ 

Three miles East of Drummondtown, still 
often called after the habit in Virginia, Acco- 
mack Court House, is "Bowman's Folly," one 
of the famous homesteads of the region. The 
builder of "Bowman's Folly" was Southey 
Littleton, descended from the jurist and writer, 
Sir Thomas Littleton, whose law book, "The 
Tenures," one of the most famous books ever 

* The first John Custis was an Englishman by birth, but 
by occupation, an inn keeper of Rotterdam. He came to 
America with his daughter, who had married ArgoU Yeardley, 
son of Governor Yeardley. Their vessel was wrecked on the 
Virginia coast in 1649, and they settled on the Eastern Shore. 

303 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

published, Sir Edward Coke made even more 
famous by his commentary. An Eastern Shore- 
man with a drop of the Littleton blood feels 
aggrieved if his parents did not bestow upon 
him the name. At ** Bowman's Folly" was born 
General John Cropper of Revolutionary fame, 
beloved of Washington, who marched his East- 
ern Shore command to Morristown, and lived to 
play an important part in times of peace. It 
was his joy in old age to lie upon the grass at 
*' Bowman's Folly," and listen to the organ 
tones of the sea winds blowing through the 
giant pines. 

Hard by ''Bowman's Folly" is ''The Folly," 
one of the Custis homesteads, and three miles 
away is another, called "Mt. Custis," a large 
house built at various periods. The place came 
into the hands of the Bayly family, long con- 
spicuous socially and politically. Howard Pyle 
in youth wrote a magazine article on "Mt. 
Custis." A Western Shore Custis homestead 
still stands, a perfect example of an early 
Georgian mansion. 

A curious and locally characteristic tomb 
in the family burying ground of the Parramores 
at "Runnymede," near "Bowman's Folly," is 
that of a living person, a colored woman, who 
has long served as devoted attendant to Miss 

304 



ACCOMACK AND NORTHAMPTON 



Elizabeth Parramore of Accomack Court House, 
a lady of the family, accompanying her upon 
all her many travels. Her devotion is such 
that she obtained permission to put up for her- 
self a tombstone in the Parramore burying 
ground, in order that she may thus lie at the 
feet of her mistress. 

At another Bayly homestead on Hunting 
Creek are three elaborate tombstones of Baylys, 
with pedigree. One is that of Eichard Bayly, 
the Seventeenth Century immigrant, another 
that of the first ''Tom" Bayly, the third that 
of his son "Tom." It was the distinction of 
the first "Tom" Bayly to have ridden on horse- 
back, in the midst of a smallpox epidemic on the 
Eastern Shore, all the way to Boston, that he 
might get from Dr. Boylston a number of 
"crusts," with which he rode back and inocu- 
lated 1700 persons, though himself a lay- 
man. No anti-vaccinationist has yet desecrated 
his grave. 

Although the wliites of Accomack and North- 
ampton are believed to be to-day of more nearly 
pure English stock than the inhabitants of any 
other part of the United States, there was in 
the early days a small admixture of continental 
Europeans. The proportion also of other 
British races than the English was relatively 

20 305 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

small. John Custis of Rotterdam, is conjec- 
tured to have brought over a few Dutch immi- 
grants, for Dutch names occur in the early 
records. There were also some early Germans, 
and possibly a few French, for there was a con- 
siderable Huguenot element in adjoining coun- 
ties of Maryland. There was also an influential 
Puritan element, if one may judge by the 
ultramarine laws in early Accomack and North- 
ampton. 

The county records of Accomack, are the 
oldest of unbroken continuity in the United 
States, the oldest existing except those of 
Plymouth, which by the way once bore the name 
Accomack. They show that very early in the 
Seventeenth Century, profane swearing, mali- 
cious gossip, common scolding, card playing 
on Sunday, lying, and the like were punisher" 
by fines, the stocks and imprisonment. In 1634, 
a man was condemned for slandering a clergy- 
man to make a pair of stocks, sit in them during 
divine service for three successive Sundays, 
and apologize to the parson. An accusation of 
witchcraft was tried in 1655. Cotton was the 
name of an early minister, and Colonel Obedience 
Robins, though a royalist in politics, had a 
Round Head Christian name, and a Puritan 
severity in his judgments as a magistrate. 

306 



ibi 



i> 



V 







> I 




MAKEMIE MONUMENT, ACCOMACK COUNTY 




ST. GEORlii: S (■Hrii( H, ( AI.LKI) ACK OF CLUB« 
PUNGOTEAGUE, VIRGINIA 




AN EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY HOMESTEAD, CHINCOTEAGUE BAY 



ACCOMACK AND NORTHAMPTON 

Incidentally he was one of the most active and 
useful citizens, and one of the most conspicuous 
as such from 1632 to his death. Although Col- 
onel Robins was of the Iqcal aristocracy, his 
brother was a simple merchant in Accomack, for 
'Urade" was not despised on the Eastern 
Shore. Whalley, the regicide judge, fleeing 
from Connecticut, is said to have settled about 
twenty miles from the Accomack line in Wor- 
cester county, Maryland, where there is now 
a Whaleyville, and where persons claiming 
descent from him still live, though they have 
dropped an *4" from the name.^ 

Accomack and Northampton are the most ^^ 
thoroughly rural counties of the Peninsula. 
Early attempts to create urban centres by 
making privileged ports failed because of pop- 
ular resistance; and hardly a single consider- 
able town has grown up between the Maryland 
boundary and Cape Charles, though Onancock 
is a busy little place. Cape Charles City, laid 
out by Thomas Scott with amply broad streets, 
and planted with umbrella trees, has a hope- 
ful ambition as a railway terminus, and the vil- 

" Major General William Goff, and Edward Whalley, a 
cousin of Oliver Cromwell, fled to Boston at the restoration 
of the Stuarts and were removed to Connecticut, where the 
British government vainly sought to arrest them. 

907 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

lage of Chincoteague Island has a relatively 
dense population. At the railway station called 
Onley has grown up within about twenty 
years a brand new and thoroughly modern 
village clustered about the offices of the busy 
co-operative buying and selling organization of 
the Accomack and Northampton farmers. Here 
daily telegraphic dispatches give the essential 
market news of nearly half the continent and 
determine the destination of shipments from 
day to day. The exchange buys many thousand 
dollars worth of seed potatoes from Maine for 
its patrons, and sells for them annually $12,000, 
000 or $14,000,000 worth of produce. 

Onley typifies the new spirit of Virginia's 
Eastern Shore, the spirit expressed in the 
adoption by black and white alike of the most 
advanced agricultural methods and machinery, 
the use of motor vehicles, the study of economic 
conditions and needs. To serve the occasions 
of less than 53,000 inhabitants this little land has 
twenty-six banks, so widely distributed that 
every farmer or man of business has banking 
facilities at his door. Modernization has not 
thus far hardened the manners or the hearts, 
has not sharpened the voices of these essen- 
tially rural folk, nor has it lessened their loyalty 
to the land and to its interesting historic past. 



J 



CHAPTER XX 
CONCLUSION 



FUTURE prosperity and industrial peace 
for the Peninsula, as also civic order and 
mutual good will, must depend upon the broad 
principle of economic justice illustrated in the 
traditional treatment of the natural opportun- 
ities afforded by the tidal waters. As to Dela- y 
ware in particular, it has the further problem 
of mutual understanding and sympathy between 
the Northern industrial majority, and the 
Southern rural minority. There is a precious 
something in life near to nature felt by thou- 
sands too inarticulate and natively reticent to 
put their feelings into words. A sound and 
instinctive reticence, indeed, prevents men from 
showing their inner best to the outside world; 
and "town bodies" are too prone to forget this 
great principle, to judge the nut by its crude 
husk. True, there is peril to rural Delaware, '^ 
as to other parts of the Peninsula, in many 
generations of near-isolation, and consequent 
contentment with a past projected into the pre- 
sent. A sound original stock, life in the open, 

309 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

free natural opportunities have saved the region 
from the worst consequences of its inherited 
conditions, its rather slight contact with ad- 
vanced communities ; but the time has come for 
the infusion of new blood, for moving on toward 
better things. 

Soviet Russia, with its ** dictatorship of the 
proletariat," has enslaved rural Russia politi- 
cally to the industrial centres. Unfortunately 
for general progress and for mutual good under- 
standing between North and South in Delaware, 
the Soviet order of political subordination has 
here been reversed, and a minority in the mainly 
rural counties has in some vital matters always 
dominated the industrial majority in New Castle 
county, to the steadily growing discontent of 
Wilmington. On the other hand, and perhaps 
naturally and inevitably, Wilmington has long 
borne toward the rural counties somewhat the 
traditional urban attitude of superiority in 
knowledge, wisdom, culture, social grace and 
civic virtue, an attitude accentuated by a sense 
of the political and economic injustice from 
which the city suffers at the hands of its rural 
neighbors. In any such attitude there is apt 
to be a degree of social, intellectual, and spirit- 
ual arrogance, much like that of New England, 
now and always in many aspects the most civi- 

310 



CONCLUSION 



lized part of the United States, toward the slave- 
holding South, and the still backward South of 
later times. New England tended to exagger- 
ate the superficial differences of two contrasted 
civilizations, partly because of native Puritan 
self-righteousness, the besetting sin of the 
saints in all, ages, partly because New England 
never really knew the best that was in the South- 
ern heart, saw with pardonable disgust the 
crudity and slovenliness of many Southern 
communities, and was perhaps a little blind to 
her own failings and foibles. Urban and rural 
Delaware, in their mutual misunderstanding, 
reproduce in little somewhat the attitude of 
North and South as it was in the past, and is to 
some degree even to-day. Improved communi- 
cations and pitiless self -searching on both sides 
should hasten mutual understanding between 
the parts of a commonwealth so small, and so 
nearly one in origin. 

Wilmington has the ambition to be a larger 
city, perhaps a really great city, and this ambi- 
tion may possibly be furthered because of the 
grave conditions now faced by the vast urban 
communities of the United States. Some think- 
ers begin to believe that those huge human hives 
are nearing the limit of their advantageous 
growth, if they have not already far passed 

311 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 

that limit. Such men suspect an element of 
absurdity and economic waste in the attempt 
to carry thousands of tons jof human beings 
twice a day in and out of great urban business 
centres. Urban areas have vastly expanded 
in a single generation, suburban dependencies 
have even more widely expanded, until the 
radius of a great city's daily come-and-go 
is what would have been for our grand- 
fathers much more than a day's journey. The 
difficulty of living and doing business in great 
cities threatens to become insurmountable. 
Meanwliile, some persons suspect that what 
we call the present ''crime wave" is possibly 
a manifestation of the essential underlying 
barbarism of these vast and intense commun- 
ities, an evidence of that volcanic subsoil which 
Carlyle ascribes to , revolutionary France. It 
is not surprising that millions, snatched half 
way across the world from all inherited loyal- 
ties and local associations, pigeonholed in 
noisome and sunless tenements, whole families 
of them enslaved by the hundred thousand to 
machines requiring a minimum of intelligence 
from their operators, and tending by dull rou- 
tine to reduce that minimum, should not make 
ideal citizens. Such a population naturally 
helps to fill the jails, easily lends ear to every 

312 



CONCLUSION 



form of revolutionary agitation, inevitably 
develops a spirit of class suspicion, jealousy 
and hatred. 

If the great cities are close to their limit of 
growth, such cities as Wilmington may receive 
a considerable share of the immigration, domes- 
tic and foreign, hitherto draAvn into the larger 
centres of population. As residuary legatee of 
great neighbors Wilmington will have before it 
the alternative of imitating the policies that have 
brought the most densely peopled centres to 
conditions that horrify thoughtful men and 
women, or of contriving some more wholesome 
mode of development. The Service Citizens of 
the future may find their problem, not in up- 
lifting rural Delaware, but in re-civilizing an 
overgrown and barbaric Wilmington. 

When those who love the tidal waters of the 
Chesapeake and its tributaries hear the sharp 
staccatto rat-tat-tat of motor boats in their 
undeviating rectilinear course, and the inso- 
lently challenging honk of swift motor cars 
ashore, they may well wonder whether such 
sounds presage a new social and industrial life 
for the Eastern Shore. Can this proverbial 
land of leisure keep its ancient charm and kind- 
ness, yet attune its life to the sound of the motor 
veliicle afloat and ashore! The Eastern Shore 

313 



DELAWARE AND THE EASTERN SHORE 



has always bred the business man. The prosper- 
ity of transplanted Eastern Shoremen has, in- 
deed, been ascribed by an admirer of the region 
in part to their characteristic speech and man- 
ners. Will the Eastern Shore, under pressure 
of new conditions, cease breeding the business 
man, and breed instead that unpleasant animal, 
the business beast? Is modern efficiency incon- 
sistent with both morals and manners? 

The Eastern Shore, the whole Peninsula, is 
catching step with the world at large, and it can- 
not afford to fall out of line. On the other hand, 
if progressive men of the great business centres 
begin to believe that the limit has been reached, 
not only in the growth of such centres in popula- 
tion, but also in the use of such barbaric business 
methods as were recently displayed to view in 
the course of public investigations, will the East- 
ern Shore take up the cast off garments of 
alarmed or repentant sinners? Must conserva- 
tive communities, in emerging from their con- 
servatism, run through all the stages that have 
brought advanced communities to the point 
that they have reached in social and indus- 
trial barbarism? 

Whatever the future holds for the Peninsula, 
it still has to offer tired worldlings the inextin- 
guishable charm of its woodlands and its waters, 

3U 



CONCLUSION 



the interest of its jealously preserved tradi- 
tions, its quaint antiquities. Not least interest- 
ing to the stranger is its race of mainly British 
stock, long rooted in the soil, — the first true 
Britons of the Midi, warmed by nearly ten 
generations of life amid almost semi-tropical 
conditions. Many thousands of these folk, like 
their American ancestors from the first, with 
free access to natural opportunities, have never 
known poverty, never hesitated to face their 
fellows of whatever wealth and position Avitli 
the fearless glance of those who feel no need 
to assert rawly their simple manhood and native 
dignity. If of such is not the Kingdom of 
Heaven, surely of such should be the free 
democratic republic of earth. 



INDEX 



B 



Aarson, Francis, Lord of Som- 

melsdyke, 270 
Accomack County, 57, 72, 90, 

294, 296, 302, 306, 307, 308 
Adams, Charles Francis, 62 
Adams, John, 29 
Adams, John Quincy, 30 
Alison, Francis, Rev., 291 
Alaop, John, 76 
"American Architectural Reign 

of Terror," 94 
Anamessex, 58 
Anglican Church, 214 
Anglican Establishment, 102 
Annapolis, 22, 36, 44 
"An Old Maryland Manor," 

269 
Apple Growing, 236 
Appoquinimink, 58, 105 
Aquatic Fowl, 76, 77, 78, 79, 

80, 81 
"Arlington," 302 
Asbury, Rev. Francis, Bishop, 

102, 112, 113, 114 
Assateague, 225 
Assawaman, 58 
Avalon, 24 
Aydelotte Family, 57 



Baltimore, 30, 33, 34, 35, 36, 

41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 53, 54 
Baltimore, Chesapeake and At- 
lantic R. R. Co., 8 
Bancroft, George M., Histori- 
an, 117 
Banks on the Eastern Shore 

of Va., 308 
Barratt, Philip, 111 
Barratt's Chapel, 111, 113 
Basic Industries, 231 
Bayard Family, 56, 63, 253 
Bayard, James A., the elder, 

281 
Bayard, Petrus, 274, 276 
Bayard, Richard H., 163 
Bayard, Thomas F., 254, 255, 

256, 257 
Bayard, Thomas F., 2nd, 8, 

273 
Bayly, "Tom," the first, 305 
Bear, The, 57 

Bedford, Judge Gunning, 162 
Bell, Jerome B., 167 
Bellevue, 81 
Belmont Hall, 181 
Betterton, 82 
Beverly, 89, 90 
Bishop of Delaware, 66 
Black, Dr. John J., 98 



817 



INDEX 



Blandy House, 94 

Blandy Family, 94 

Bohemia, 119, 120 

Bohemia Manor, feudal privi- 
leges of lords, 75 

Bohemia Manor, 102, 104 

Bohemia Manor, area and 
boundaries, 124 

Bohemia River, 45, 125 

Bombay Hook, 275 

Bombay Hook Island, 208 

Boston, 15, 62 

Bostonian, 15, 62 

Boston Transcript, 9 

"BoAvman's Folly," 303, 304 

Bradford, Judge E. G., the 
elder, 124 

Bradford, Judge Edward G., 
169 

Bradford, Henry B., 8, 124 

Brandy wine Village, 169 

Brent, Margaret, 135, 218 

Brick-clay, 20 

Britons of the Midi, 315 

Brook Farm, 275 

Brother Jenkins, 105 

Brown's Chapel, now Bethel, 
112 

Bungalow, 96 

Burroughs, John, 74 

Business man and business 
beast, 314 



Callahan, Griffen S., 9 
Cape Charles, 307 
Cape Charles City, 307 
College for Colored Youth, 
200 



Calvert, Cecilius, 24 

Calvert Family, 23, 24, 25, 103 

Cambridge, 187, 188 

Camp Meeting, 223 

Cantwell's Bridge, 181 

Canvasback, 77, 79, 81 

Cape Codder, 53 

Caroline Coimty, 176 

Catswamp, 57 

Cecil County, 110 

Centerville, 176 

Charts of the Chesapeake, 83 

Chesapeake Bay, 17, 21, 22, 

24, 26, 31, 33, 41 
Chesapeake and Delaware 

Canal, 19, 32, 41, 83 
Chesapeake City, 43, 181 
Chesapeake Country, 44 
Chester River, 45, 176 
Chestertown, 8, 88, 107, 175, 

176 
Cheyney, J. Barton, 8 
Chincoteague Island, 58, 80, 

208, 225, 226, 227, 228 
Chincoteague Homes, 228, 229, 

230 
Chincoteague Sound, 225 
Choptank River, 45, 46, 49, 

58, 187 
Christiana River, 157, 158, 203 
Christiana, 16 
Churches founded by Makemie, 

64 
Churches, statistics of, in 1807, 

113 
Civil War, 27 
Claiborne, Wm., 22, 24, 25, 

122, 135, 214, 215, 216, 217, 

218 



318 



INDEX 



Clay, Henry, 30 

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 257, 
258, 259 

Clayton, John U., 258, 259 

Clergy as Leaders, 64 

Clermont, Fulton's, 34 

Cleveland, President, 79 

Coan River, 240 

Coats of Arms, 58 

"Coffin-boat," 77 

Coke, Bishop Thomas, 112, 113 

"Colonial Mansions of Mary- 
land and Delaware," 89 

Communal Land Holding, 235 

Communism of the Labor ists, 
268 

Company Farming, 237 

Concord, 183 

Congress, 29, 34 

Conowingo Bridge, 213 

Conrad, Judge Henry C, 8, 
112 

Constables Family, 63 

Cooeh Family, 75, 278 

Cooeh's Bridge, 278 

Cook-book of Delaware, 97 

Cooper, Levin T., 8 

Corbit, Daniel W., 90 

Corner Ketch, 57 

Cornpone, 98 

"Corridor," 92 

County Seats, 175, 176, 177, 
178, 179, 180 

Cow-sheds, thatched, 86 

Crisfield, 81, 84, 184, 185, 186 

Crisfield, John W., 184 

Cradle of Methodism, 111 

Croasdale, William T., 165, 
166, 168, 248 



Cross Keys, 57 

Cross Manor, 87 

Curtis, Charles M., Chancellor, 

8, 169, 249, 250 
Curtis Paper Mills, 182 
Custis, John, 303 
Custis, John, IV, 302 
Custis, John of Rotterdam, 

303, 306 
Custis, Martha, 302 

D 

Dames' Quarter, 57 

Danckaerts, Jasper, 270, 271, 
276 

Dashiel, Eastern Shore French 
Name, 57 

Davis, J. M., 8 

Davis, Jefferson, Welsh Tract 
Ancestry, 279 

Davis, Kent Delaware, 57 

Davis, Newcastle Delaware, 57 

Davis, Sussex Delaware, 57 

Deal's Island, 80, 224 

Deeper Water Ways Ass'n., 8 

Deer Park Hotel, Newark, 142 

De Foe, Daniel, 59 

De la Grange, 276 

Delaware: area, 18; linear 
measurements, 19 ; Dutch 
settlement, 22; Swedes and 
Finns, 22; Dutch conquest, 
22; English conquest, 23; 
winning of legislative as- 
sembly, 24; first elected 
governor, 24 ; improved high- 
ways, 37, 38, 39, 40; popu- 
lation, 56 ; races, 56 ; French 



319 



INDEX 



family names, 57 ; provin- 
cialisms, 65; fox hunting, 
75 ; oldest house, 87 ; north- 
ern arc, 136, 137, 142, 182; 
quarrel over this "Flat- 
iron," 143, 144, 145, 146; 
cradle of the state, 186; 
judiciary, 246, 247; chan- 
cellorship, 248, 249; north 
and south at odds, 310 

Delaware Bay, 17 

Delaware Breakwater, 186 

Delaware City, 42, 180 

Delaware R. R., 34 

Delaware River, 25, 31, 34 

Delmar, 57 

Delmarvia, 27 

"Delmarvia Star," 167 

Democratic County Meeting, 
260, 261 

Dennis, Alfred P., 67 

Dennis, John, 90 

Dennis Family, 67, 89 

Dennis, Littleton, 89 

Denton, 45, 176, 177 

Devereaux Family, 57 

Diary of Labadist Mission- 
aries, 270 

Dilworth, James B., 78 

Dixon, Jeremiah, 141 

Domestic Architecture, 85, 86, 
87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 
94, 95 

Douglass, Frederick, 178 

Dover, 106, 194, 195, 196, 197, 
198, 200, 201 

Dover Bridge, 177 
Dover Green, 198 

Dravpyer's Congregation, 109 



Drawyer's Presbyterian 

Church, 90 
Drummondtown, 303 
DuPont, Coleman, 37, 38, 39 
DuPont Building, 172, 173 
DuPont de Nemours, Pierre 

Samuel, 161 
DuPont Family, 39, 57 
DuPont, Pierre S., 162, 200, 

283 
DuPonts, Expansion of busi- 
ness, 170, 171, 172 
DuPont Works, 242, 243, 244 
Dutch, The, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28 

E 

Eastern Shore of Maryland: 
area, 18; division into coun- 
ties, 25 ; rivers, 45, 49, 83 ; 
county names, 57; family 
traditions, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 ; 
social and industrial revo- 
lution, 71, 72; open air 
hotels, 74; relation of slav- 
ery to domestic architecture, 
91, 92, ,93; Episcopacy, 104, 
106; clergy paid in tobacco, 
107 ; most notable colonial 
magnate, 135; pound nets, 
242; peril of isolation, 309 

Eastern Shore of Virginia: 
statistics, 295; crude begin- 
nings, 296; Royalists and 
Parliament men, 297; Col- 
onial aristocracy, 297, 298, 
299; piracy, 299; soil and 
climate, 300, 301 ; quaint 
traditions, 302, 303, 304, 
305; Puritanism, 306; mod- 
ern spirit, 307, 308 

320 



INDEX 



Easton, 115, 176, 177 

Easton Point, 177 

Economic Conditions of early 

Colonists, 231, 232, 233 
Educational General Fund, 280 
Elizabeth, Daughter of the 

Elector Palatine, 269 
Elk Neck, 273 
Elk River, 29, 45 
Elkton, 80, 175, 176 
England, 23, 26, 32 
Evangelizing slaves, 1 16 
"Every Evening," 165, 166, 

167 
Ewbanks, Elder, 279 



Faitharne, William, 128 

Family tradition, 67 

"Far-downer," 53 

Farmers' Exchange, 308 

Federal order for separation of 
land lines and steamboats, 
35 

Feldspar, 20 

Female College, 282 

Fendell, Governor of Mary- 
land, 121, 122 

Ferries, 36 

Fig, 46 

Finns, 22 

Fishing, suitable waters, 81, 
82 

Flash, Sandy, highwayman, 
165 

Fitch, John, 34 

"Flat-Iron," The, 143, 144 

"Folly, The," 304 

Folly Woods, 165 



Fort Casimir, 201 
Fort Delaware, 208 
Fountain, Mary, 154 
Fox Hunting, 74, 75 
Franklin City , 225 
Franklin Family, 63 
Frazer, Eben, 94 
Frazer, Stanley J., 125 
P'ree natural opportunities, 61 
French Family Names, 56, 57 
French Government, 39 
French Huguenots, 25 
Frenchtown, 29, 30 
Frederick, Elector Palatine, 

269 
Fredericktown, 180 , 

Friends, The, 115, 116 
"Friends of Old Dra^vJ'ers, 

The," 109 
Friends' School, 282 
Fulton, Robert, 34 



Gale Homestead, 179 
Garesche, a Delaware French 

name, 57 
Gayley, Rev. Dr. Samuel A., 

110 
George, Henry, 166 
George, Joshua, 124 
Georgian Houses, 88 
Georgetown, Del., 175, 180 
Georgetown, Maryland, 180 
GlasgoAv Presbyterian Church, 

268 
Golden Horn, 16 
Goldsboroughs, The, 63 
Gospel preached in many 

tongues, 105 



321 



INDEX 



Grasens, of Cross Manor, 87 
Gray, Judge George, 165, 169, 

254, 255, 257, 291 
Gunning, 73, 79 
Grove Point, 82 

H 

"Hactenus Inculta," 121, 122, 
124, 127, 139, 144 

Hall, Judge Willard, 280, 281 

Hardwicke, Chancellor, 23 

Hamill, The Rev. Dr. Hugh, 85 

Hammond, John Martin, 89 

Handy, General, 17,9 

Havre de Grace, 81 

Head-of-Christiana Church, 
110 

Henrys, Tlie, 63 

Herbert, William, 261 

Herbner, Edward, 9 

Herrman, Augustine : his 
dream of a canal, 32; birth 
and parentage, 117; will, 
103, 123; his map of the 
Peninsula, 118, 127, 128, 
129; denization, 123; mini- 
ature, 128; naturalization, 
129; escape from prison, 
131; Manor House, 132; 
abdication, 133 ; relations 
with Labodists, 273 

Herrman, Casparus, 273 

Herrman, Ephraim, father of 
Augustine, 117 

Herrman, Ephraim George, son 
of Augustine, 117, 133, 272 

Herrman, Margaret, 272 
Higgins, Anthony, U. S. Sena- 
tor, 264, 265 



Highway Commission of Dela- 
ware, 38 

"Historic Virginia Homes anti 
Churches," 89 

Hodgkins, Capt. W. C, 144 

Hooper's Island, 224 

Hot Cakes, 97, 98 

"Housen," 65 

Howard, T. C. B., Captain, 238 

Hubbard, Wilbur W., 8, 88, 107 

Huguenots, 161 

Hullihen, Dr. Walter, 293 

Humphrey, George W., 167 

"Hundred," name of township 
in Delaware, 57 



Immanuel Episcopal Church, 

105, 207 
Indian Geographic Names, 58 
Indian River Bay, 81 
Iron Hill, 268, 276, 277 
Islanders of the Chesapeake, 

209,210, 211 



Jackson, Elihu, Governor of 

Maryland, 190 
James, Duke of York, 137 
James, B. B., 269 
James River, 45 
Jameson, J. F., 269 
Jamestown, 22 
Jaquet, Paul, 271 
Janvier Family, 57 
Janvier, John, 9 
Jefferson, Thomas, 29, 162 
Jesuits, 103, 104 
Johnson, Everett C, 8, 38, 172 

322 



INDEX 



K 

"Kaint," 65 

Kaolin, 20 

Karsner, George, 201 

Kathleen Ni Houlilian, 16 

Katy Dysart's, 58 

Kent County, Delaware, 111, 

112 
Kent Co., Maryland, 25 
Kentucky, 31 
Kent Island, 22, 24, 25, 80, 

122, 135, 213 
King, Irish Baronet, G4 
Kiptopeke, G2, 301 



Lahadie, Jean de, 269 
Labadisto, 102, 267, 268, 270, 

271, 275 
La Fayette, 87 
Laird, James, 254 
Laird, The Rev. Robert M., 70 
Laird, odd provision of a will, 

251 
Lancaster, Robert A., Jr., 89 
"Land of Gentlemen," 298 
"Laughing King," 296 
Laurel Creek, 184 
Lawrence, 15 

Leather Industry of Wilming- 
ton, 242 
Lee, General Robert E., 298 
Lee, Lighthorse Harry, 87 
Lewes, 22, 80, 187 
Lewis, Elizabeth, 158 
"Little Red Schoolhouse," 287 
Littleton, Southey, 303 



Littleton, Sir Thomas, 303 

Limestone, 20 

Lincoln, 189 

Lincoln Highway, 37, 176 

Lloyd Family, 63 

Lloyd Place, The, 177 

Lippincott, J. B. Co., 89 

Log Houses, 85 

Long Islanders, 54 

Long Pastorates, 110 

Lord Baltimore, 23, 24, 25, 123 

Lord Baltimore, the Fifth, 25 

Lord Cornbury, 102, 110 

Lowell, 15 

Lower West Nottingham 

Church, 110 
Lutheran Church, 105 

M 

McComb, Henry C, 242 

McDonough, 256 

McKean, Governor of Penn- 
sylvania, 162 

McKinly, John, "President of 
Delaware," 196 

McMaster, John S., 8 

McMaster, The Rev. Samuel, 
64, 151 

Machipongo, 58 

Maecht Van Enkhuyscn, 117 

Makemie, The Rev. Francis, 
64, 102, 108 

Makemie Memorial Church, 
108 

Makemio's Tomb, 109 

Manhattan, 118, 119, 120, 121 

Manokin River, 45 

Manokin Church, 108, 109 



323 



INDEX 



Manor of St. Gabriel's, 135 

Map of the Peninsula, made 
by Herrman, 127, 128 

"Marrying Dennis," The, 67 

Marshall, Dr. George William, 
266 

Marshall, Dr. Samuel, 189 

Marshall, Dr. William, 189 

Marshall Hospital, 189 

Martin, Judge William R., 
251, 252 

Marydel, 57 

Maryland, 17, 18, 24, 25, 27, 
34, 36, 40, 42, 45 

Maryland Agricultural Col- 
lege, 69 

Maryland Biscuit, 98 

Maryland, Delaware and Vir- 
ginia R. R. Co., 8 

Maryland, Steam Ferry Boat, 
33 

Marylanders, 27 

Maslin, George W., 179 

Mason and Dixon's Line, 17, 
31, 52, 136, 144 

Mason, Charles, 141 

Matier Family, 57 

Mattaponi, 58 

Mechanics, their place in 
society, 60 

Mediterranean, 22 

Mediterranean, Maryland's 
Little, 41 

Megalomania, 37 

Mermaid, The, 57 

Methodist Protestant Church, 
114, 115 

Methodism, A child of demo- 
cracy, 113 



Michigan, 18, 19 

Middle Neck, 124 

Middletown, 9, 106, 181 

Miles River, 177 

Milford, 188, 189, 196 

Milton, 189 

Minuit, Peter, 119 

Mispillion Creek, 188, 196 

Mitchell, Dr. Samuel Chiles, 
293 

Mixed Strains in Delaware, 
56 

Mocking Bird, 47, 106 

Montgomery, Robert, 162 

Moore, John Bassett, Justice 
of Ward County, 255 

Moors, 286 

Morgan, Dr., President Dickin- 
son College, 66 

Morgan, George, 5, 8, 66 

Motor-vehicles, 36 

"Mt. Custis," 304 

"Mung-'em's-Mill," 65 

Murderkill Creek, 196 

Murderkill Hundred, 111 

Myggenborg, 106 

N 

Naaman's-on-Delaware, 87 

Nandua, Creek, 45 

Nantieoke River, 45, 46, 49, 

50, 51, 58 
Nassawaddox, 58 
Natural opportunities, 01, 232, 

309 
Naval Battle in Pocomoke , 

River, 216 
Newark, 8, 110, 182, 183 
Newark Academy, 291 



.S24 



INDEX 



Norfolk, 41, 44, 84 

New Castle, 29, 30, 33, 104, 
105, 165, 194, 201, 202, 203, 
204, 205, 206, 207 

New Castle and Frenchtown 
R. E., 30, 31, 32, 33 

New Arastel, 120, 121 

New England, 29, 31, 32 

New Englanders, their domes- 
tic architecture, 92, 93 

New London, Pa., 291 
Northampton County, 105, 246, 
296, 300, 302, 305, 307 



Occohannock Creek, 45, 81 
Odell, Dr. Joseph S., 8, 284 
Odessa, 90, 115, 181 
Old Dominion, The, 24, 26, 294 
Old English Customs, 66 
Old Episcopal Churches, 106, 

107, 108 
Oldest House in Maryland, 87 
Old Inns, names of, 57 
"Old Man's Path, The" 131 
Old Swedes' Church, 105 
Old Trinity, 106 
Onancock, 80, 307 
Onancock Creek, 48 
Onley, 308 
Oshkosh, 15 
Owen, Pvichard, 112 
Oxford, 81 
Oystering, 238, 239, 240, 241 



Palatinate, 24, 25 
Parramore, Miss Elizabetii, 
304, 305 



Parson Harris, 107 
Parson Magraw, 110 
Patapsco River, 44 
Paynter, Dr. R. G., 284 
Pea Patch Island, 208 
"Peach-an'-honey," National 
Drink of Delaware, 99, 100 
Peach crop, 236 
Pearce Family, The, 63 
Pearce, Judge James Alfred, 

251 
Pencader Hundred, 276 
Peninsula, the "American 
Golden Horn:" 16; geo- 
graphic position, 17; area, 
land and water, 17, 18; 
shape, 19; linear dimen- 
sions, 19; general topo- 
graphy, 20; climate, 21; 
early settlements, 22, 23, 24; 
proposals to make a single 
state, 27, 28; pioneer in 
steam railways and steam 
navigation, 29; railway de- 
velopment, 33, 34; highway 
improvement, 36, 37, 38, 39, 
40; rivers, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 
46, 47, 48, 49, 50; geo- 
graphical names, 57, 58; 
domestic architecture, 85, 
86, 88, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95; 
food and drink, 97, 98, 99, 
100; home of religious lib- 
erty, 101; division of, 139; 
urban population, 175; basic 
industries, 231; respect for 
judiciary, 247 ; future pros- 
perity and industrial peace, 
309 



325 



INDEX 



Penn, Wm., 23, 101, 137, 138, rrotcstantism, its slow growth, 



202, 205, 268, 271 
Pennisylvania, 136 
Pennsylvania R. R., 33, 34, 35 
Pennypacker, Isaac R., 91, 169 
Pepper Box, 57 
Philadelphia, 5, 8, 30, 33, 34, 

41, 42, 140 
Philadelphia Record, 9 
Pier One, Pratt Street, Balto , 

44, 80 
Pilgrim Fathers, 22 
Pitt's Creek Church, 109 
Plover, black-breasted, 80 
Plymouth, 22, 107 
Pocomoke City, 179 
Pocomoke River, 45, 81 
Pocomoke Voyage, 48 
Political feeling better, 245 
Poor Nell, 71 
"Poor White Trash," 61 
Port Penn, 65, 273 
Potomac River, 24, 45 
Potter, Col. Benjamin, his 

trust estate, 249, 250 
Port Deposit, 212 
Prague, 117 

Presbytery of Lewes, 64, 291 
Presbyterianism, 108 
Predeaux, Euphemia, 148, 153 
Prideaux Family, 57 
Prideaux, Major Joshua, 147, 

148, 152, 153, 154 
Prideaux, Sarah 148, 150, 151, 

152, 155 
Princess Anne, 108, 176, 178, 

179 
Prayers of the Colored People, 

116 



103 
Provincialisms of speech, 65 
Pungoteague, 58 
Puritan Laws of Virginia's 

Eastern Shore, 306 
Purnell, Capt. John Selby, 70 
Purnell, Dr. Caroline, 68 
Purnell, Dr. William Henry, 

68 
Purnell Family, 63, 68 
Piu'uell Legion, 68 
Pyle, Howard, 168, 109, 304 



Quakers, 58, 101, 115, 130, 

302, 
Quaker Conscience, Patience, 

Courage, 164 
Quantico, 58 
Quarantine Station, Delaware 

Bay, 208 
"Quarters," The, 92, 96 
Queen Anne, 100, 107 
Queen Anne's County, 176 
"Queponca Purnells," The, 68 



R 



Railbird, 80 
Rappahannock River, 45 
Rascob, John, 284 
Redemptioner, 59, 76 
Red Lion, 57 
Reedy Island, 208 
Reform Club of New York, 166 
Rehoboth Bay, 81 
Rehoboth Church, 108 
Rehoboth, Delaware, 186 



326 



INDEX 



Rehoboth, Maryland, 64 
Religious Liberty, 101 
Revolutionary War, 26 
Ridgely Family, 63 
Ridgely, Henry, 284 
Rising Sun, 57 
Robins, Col. Obedience, 69, 71, 

306, 307 
Robins Family, 63, 68 
Robins, James Bowdoin, 70 
Robins, The Rev. John Purnell, 

70 
Robins, Judge, 68, 69, 70, 151 
Robins, Dr. William Littleton, 

70 
Robinson Family, 87 
Rodney, Judge Richard S., 207 
"Rotation in Office," 247 
Royal Oak, 81 
9 Roustabouts of Chesapeake, 52 
Royalists, 26 
Rudolph Family, 57 
"Runnymede," 304 
Russell House, Newark, 85 
Russell, Rev. Arthur Kirk- 
wood, 85 



St. Andrew's Church, 106 

St. Anne's, 106, 110 

St. Augustine, 273 

St. Inigo's Creek, 88 

St. Jones' Creek, 199 

St. Lawrence River, 33 

St. Mary's, 24 

St Patrick's Tavern, Newark, 

142 
St. Paul's, 107 



St. Xavier's Jesuit Church and 
Monastery, 104 

"Saints," Rule of, 26 

Salisbury, 46, 189, 190 

Salisbury Church, 109 

Sassafras River, 45, 82 

Saulsbury, Andrew, 254 

Saulsbury, Eli, U S. Senator, 
199 

Saulsbury, Gove, Governor of 
Delaware, 257 

Saulsbury Family, 253 

Saulsbury, John, 254 

Saulsbury, Willard, the elder, 
257, 258 

Saulsbury, Willard, U. S. Sen- 
ator, 258 

Saxi's Island, 224 

Schoff, W. H., 8 

School Auxiliary Ass'n., 284 

Schools for Colored Children, 

286, 287 

School Meeting, 281 
Schools, Parochial, 282 
Schools, Private, 282, 283 
Schools, Rural, for Whites, 

287 
Schools, State Superintendent 

of, 282, 288 
School Standardization, 289 
Scotch, 91, 109 
Scotch-Irish, 109 
Scott, Henry P., 284 
Scott, Thomas, 307 
Seaford, 46, 183, 184 
Service Citizens, 283, 284, 285, 

287, 288, 289, 313 
Shad fisheries, 241 
"Shanghaiing," 238 



INDEX 



Sharp, H. Rodney, 125 
Sharptown, 8, 184 
Shingled houses, 93 
Shipley, William, 158, 159, 174 
Shipwrights of the Eastern 

Shore, 237 
Sinepuxent, 58, 81 
Skilled Mechanics of Colonial 

days, 298 
Slavery, 26, 61, 91, 295 
Sluyter, Peter, 270, 271, 274, 

276 
Smallest house of worship, 115 
Smith, William, 145 
Smith, William, "The Gentle- 
man from Pennsylvania," 

143 
Snow Hill, 45, 69, 106, 108, 

176, 178, 179 
Society for the Propagation 

of the Gospel in Foreign 

Parts, 107 
"Solemn League and Covenant, 

69 
Somerset County, 176, 189 
Soulsby, R. H., 8 
South River, 22, 118, 119 
Speakman Family, 181 
Spence, Ara, 69, 71 
Spence Family, 63, 69 
Spence, Dr. John, 69 
Spence, Judge Ara, 252 
Spence, Irving, 69 
Spence, Lemuel Purnell, 69 
Spence, Thomas H., 69 
Spesutia Island, 213 
Spoonbread, 98 
Stanton, 106 
State Board of Education, 285 



State Hospital, 190 

State House of Delaware, 200 

State Library of Delaware, 200 

Steamboats, 31 

Steamboat Lines, 35, 36 

Stewart, Drs. David, seven in 

succession, 65 
Stone houses, 91 
Strawberries, 43 
Stuarts, 25 
Stuyvesant, Peter, 120, 122, 

123 
Sulgrave Manor, 88 
"Sunday Star," 167 
Surveyors, well paid and 

highly considered, 141 
Susquehanna River, 33, 212 
Sussex County, 37 
Sussex County, an imperium 

in imperio, 65, 66 
Swedes, 22, 25 
Swedish settlement, 157 
Swivel-gun, 77 
Synod of Philadelphia, 291 



Talbot County, 176, 178 
Talbot, Rev, John, 105 
Tangier Harbor, 220 
Tangier Island, 114, 177, 219, 

220, 221, 222, 223, 224 
Tangier Sound, 80, 184 
Tariffians, 31 
Tariff, 31 

Tatnall, Joseph, 160 
Taxing site values neglected, 

235 
Taylor, Bayard, 21 
Taylor, Merris, 8, 259 

328 



R D 1 8 



INDEX 



Teach, Pirate, alias "Black- 
beard," 299 
Teagle House, 178 
"Terrapin Farm," 185 
"The Judges," 93, 180 
Thirty Years' War, 101, 103 
Thomas Chapel, 112 
Thomas, Joshua, "Parson of 

the Islands," 114 
Thrum-Capped, 90 
Tilghman's Island, 81, 224 
Tower Hill School, 283 
Townsend, John G., Governor 

of Delaware, 38 
Townsend, Samuel, 261, 262, 

2G3 
Tred Avon or Third Haven 

Eiver, 45, 48, 49, 177 
Trent, Dr. W. P., 59 
Trimble Family, 59 
Tuckaho River, 58 
Turner, The Rev. Charles, 

Henry Black, Rector, St. 

Peter's, Lewes, 106 
Twelfth Night, 66 
lyaskin, 50, 51, 58 
Types of fishing boats, 237, 

238 

u 

United States, 30, 31 

University of Delaware: 182, 
290 ; Agricultural Depart- 
ment, 182; Agricultural Ex- 
periment Station, 182; Del- 
aware College, 182, 291, 292, 
293; Old College, 290; Wo- 
men's College of Delaware, 
290, 291 



Utie, Col. Nathaniel, 121, 122, 

213 
Upshur Family, 63 



Valley of the Swans, 22 
Vandegrift, Levds Cass, 169, 

170 
Van Schurman, Anna Maria, 

269 
Vickers Family, 63 
Victoriana, 179 
Village Life in America, 190, 

191, 192 
Vining, Miss, 197 
Virginia, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24, 

25, ^6, 40, 294 
"Virginia Dynasty," 29, 30 
Vorsman, also Peter Sluyter, 

275 
Vote Buying, 263, 264 
Voyage from Salisbury to 

Baltimore, 50 

W 

Waiters, of the Chesapeake 

Steamers, 54 
Waldron, Resolved or perhaps 

Roosevelt, 121, 122 
Walker, W. H., Jr., 8 
Wallenstein, 117 
Washington College, 176 
Washington, G., 29, 30, 31, 34 

37, 86, 87 
Watchapreague, 58, 80 
Watkens, Gassaway, 256 
Watson Evans House, 183 



329 



INDEX 



Watt's Island, 223 
Wayne, Mad Anthony, 87 
Webster, Daniel, 31 
Welsh, 91 

Welsh Tract, 267, 276 
Welsh Tract Baptist Church, 

277 
Welsh Tract Public School. 

278 
Wesley Collegiate Institute, 

200, 283 
Wesley, Rev. John, 114 
Wesley's Notes on the New 

Testament, 111 
Western Shore, 34, 87 
West Point, 44 
West Virginia, 294 
Wetipkin, 58 
Whaleyville, 307 
Whalley, Edward, the regi- 
cide, 307 
Whipping Post, 250 
Whealton, Captain John, of 

Chincoteague, 225 
White Clay Creek Church, 110 
White House, The, 29, 30 
Whiteleys Homestead, 152 
Wicomico County, 25, 57, 189 
Wicomico River, 45, 46, 49, 

50, 189 
Wieuwerd, 269, 270 
William III, King, 275 
William and Mary, 102, 137, 

138 
Williamson, Alexander F., 94 



Willingstown, 158 

Wilmington, 22, 33, 56, 105, 
157, 159, 160, 164, 170, 171, 
172, 265, 310, 311, 313 

Wilmington, Earl of, 158 

Wilmington Conference Acad- 
emy, 199, 200, 283 

Wilson, General James H., 269 

Wilson, Wilbur T., 8, 144 

Wilson, Woodrow, President, 
258 

Wise Family, 63 

Wise, Henry A., 223 

Wise, Jennings Cropper, 20 

Wise, John S., 62 

Women, their valuable work, 
192 

Women's College of Delaware, 
182 

Worcester County, 45, 107, 
108, 176, 189 



Yachting, 82, 83, 84 
Yeardley, Argoll, Governor of 

Va., 303 
Yellow-legs, 80 
Yeo, Rev. Thomas, 104 
Younger sons land hungry, 

234 
York River, 44 

z 

Zwaanendael, 22, 23, 24, 117, 
121, 122 







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